A study on the yield of self-healing carbon nanotube/nanowire-based system

This thesis has presented a study on the yield of carbon-nanotube/nanowire array-based computing systems. The emphasis was given on the novel property of the technology, the self-healing capability, and its impact on the yield improvement. This thesis has presented an extensive and comprehensive review of the recent practices of carbon-nanotube/nanowire technology and an array-based computing architecture built with carbon-nanotube/nanowire technology. The carbon-nanotube/nanowire array-based computing architecture has been comprehensively characterized; architecture-specific practical defects and failures have been extensively characterized and probabilistically parameterized with specific architectural as well as computational factors taken into account; and the yield of the system with such architecture has been incrementally developed. Based on the proposed yield model, parametric simulation has been conducted and it has revealed the synergistic impact of conventional redundancy-based defect/failure-tolerance and self-healing capability on the yield through comparative study. This thesis work will ultimately provide a sound theoretical foundation for optimization of carbon-nanotube/nanowire-based computing systems architecture design and fabrication. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...