Carbon Nanoelectronics: Towards Energy-Efficient Computing

Power consumption is a significant challenge, often limiting the performance of integrated circuits from mobile devices to massive data centers. Carbon nanoelectronics have emerged as potentially energy-efficient future devices and interconnects, with both large mobility and thermal conductivity. This talk will focus on power dissipation in carbon nanotubes and graphene, with applications to low-energy devices, interconnects and memory elements. Experiments have been used to gain new insight into the fundamental behavior of such devices, and to better inform practical device models. The results suggest much room for energy optimization in nanoelectronics through the design of geometry, interfaces, and materials.
Eric Pop joined the ECE faculty at UIUC in 2007. His group studies energy-efficient devices based on carbon nanotubes, graphene, and phase-change materials. Prior to UIUC he worked at Intel on non-volatile memory and did post-doctoral work at Stanford on the thermal properties of carbon nanotubes. He received his Ph.D. in EE from Stanford (2005), and holds M.S./B.S. degrees in EE and a B.S. in Physics from MIT (1999). He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the AFOSR Young Investigator Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, the Arnold O. Beckman Research Award, the SRC/IBM Fellowship, and two SRC Best Paper awards. He currently serves on the technical program committee of the Device Research Conference (DRC), and is the faculty advisor of the HKN Alpha chapter at UIUC.