• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.175-188
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• 2011

As complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) continues to scale down deeper into the nanoscale, various device non-idealities cause the I-V characteristics to be substantially different from well-tempered metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). The last few years witnessed a dramatic increase in nanotechnology research, especially the nanoelectronics. These technologies vary in their maturity. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are at the forefront of these new materials because of the unique mechanical and electronic properties. CNTFET is the most promising technology to extend or complement traditional silicon technology due to three reasons: first, the operation principle and the device structure are similar to CMOS devices and it is possible to reuse the established CMOS design infrastructure. Second, it is also possible to reuse CMOS fabrication process. And the most important reason is that CNTFET has the best experimentally demonstrated device current carrying ability to date. This paper discusses and reviewsthe feasibility of the CNTFET's application at this point of time in integrated circuits design by investigating different types of circuit blocks considering the advantages that the CNTFETs offer.