Evaluation of mobility in thin Bi2Se3 topological insulator for prospects of local electrical interconnects

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) topological insulator (TI) has been conjectured as an emerging material to replace copper (Cu) as an interconnect material because of the suppression of elastic scattering from doping and charge impurities for carrier transport on TI surface. We, therefore via full real-space simulation, examine the feasibility of using thin 3D-TI (Bi2Se3) wire for the local electrical interconnects in the presence of edge roughness, vacancies, acoustic phonons and charge impurities across temperature and Fermi-level by simulating quantum transport through Non-Equilibrium Green Function algorithm. We found that because of the scattering induced by the acoustic phonons, the mobility reduces considerably at the room temperature which complemented with the low density of states near Dirac-point does not position Bi2Se3 3D-TI as a promising material to replace Cu for local interconnects. Properties required in suitable TI material for this application have also been discussed.