Single-electron counting statistics and its circuit application in nanoscale field-effect transistors at room temperature

A circuit utilizing single electrons is demonstrated at room temperature. Individual electrons randomly passing through the nanoscale silicon-on-insulator metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) are monitored by an electrometer in real time. Such a random behavior of single electrons is used for high-quality random-number generation suitable for data processing which stochastically extracts the most preferable pattern among various ones. MOSFET-based random-number generation allows fast operation as well as high controllability, which leads to flexible extraction of the preferable pattern.