In the past 60 years, silicon-based semiconductor technology has triggered off the profound change of our information society, but it is also gradually approaching to the physical limit and engineering limit as well. Thus, the global semiconductor industry has entered into the post-Moore era. Carbon nanotube has many excellent electronic properties such as high mobility and ultra-thin body, so it has become a hopeful candidate for the new semiconductor material in the post-Moore era. After more than 20 years of development, carbon based electronic technology has made fundamental breakthroughs in many basic problems such as material preparation, Ohmic metal-semiconductor contact and gate engineering. In principle, there is no insurmountable obstacle in its industrialization process now. Therefore, in this paper the intrinsic advantages of carbon based electronic technology in the post-Moore era is introduced, the basic problems, progress and optimization direction of carbon based electronic technology are summarized, the application prospects in the fields of digital circuits, radio frequency electronics, sensing and detection, three-dimensional integration and chips for special applications are presented. Finally, the comprehensive challenges to the industrialization of carbon based electronic technology are analyzed, and its future development is also prospected.