Quantum-dot cellular automata: introduction and experimental overview

Author

Snider, Gregory L. ; Orlov, Alexei O. ; Kummamuru, Ravi K. ; Ramasubramaniam, Rajagopal ; Amlani, Islamshah ; Bernstein, Gary H. ; Lent, Craig S. ; Merz, James L. ; Wolfgang, P.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Notre Dame Univ., IN, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

465

Lastpage

470

Abstract

An overview is given of the QCA architecture, along with a summary of experimental demonstrations of QCA devices. Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a transistorless computation paradigm that addresses such challenging issues as device and power density. The basic building blocks of the QCA architecture, such as AND, OR gates and clocked cells have been demonstrated and are presented. The quantum dots used in the experiments are metal islands that are coupled by capacitors and tunnel junctions. An improved design of the cell is presented in which all four dots of the cell are coupled by tunnel junctions. A noninvasive electrometer is presented which improves the sensitivity and linearity of dot potential measurements. The operation of this basic cell is confirmed by an externally controlled polarization change of the cell

Keywords

Boolean functions; cellular automata; clocks; quantum gates; semiconductor quantum dots; tunnelling; AND gates; OR gates; QCA architecture; clocked cells; dot potential measurements; externally controlled polarization change; metal islands; noninvasive electrometer; power density; quantum-dot cellular automata; transistorless computation paradigm; tunnel junctions; Circuits; Clocks; Computer architecture; Electrons; FETs; Polarization; Power dissipation; Quantum cellular automata; Quantum computing; Quantum dots;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nanotechnology, 2001. IEEE-NANO 2001. Proceedings of the 2001 1st IEEE Conference on

Conference_Location

Maui, HI

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7215-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NANO.2001.966468

Filename

966468