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For the past 30 years, microelectronics industries have succeeded in making huge leaps in increasing the speed and reducing the power requirements of electronic devices. According to Moores law, number of devices integrated in a chip doubles every 18 -24 months. International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) reported that this trend is expected to continue until 2020. Beyond that the physical and power density restrictions would restrict further scaling of integrated circuits in modern-day manufacturing technology of CMOS. In order to further increase device density, microelectronics industries have to change from the established prototype to a new prototype which can get over these effects i.e. Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) QCA-Cell, a basic device, enables high device densities and also can function at THz frequencies by consuming low power. QCA cell contains electrons that help in encoding binary information. The position of electrons is decided by Columbic interaction between electrons and this facilitates signal transmission and thus the logic state of a cell. It depends on the Columbic interaction between device cells. A QCA cell consists of four charge containers or dots, placed at the corners of a square.
QCA Cell
QCA cell enables both computation and transmission of information QCA cell consists of four Quantum-dots in a square array & two electrons. The quantum dots are coupled through potential barriers and the electrons can tunnel through the barriers depending on their heights. The potential barrier heights are controlled by external voltage. If the potential barriers are low the electrons can easily tunnel through them. If they are raised, the electrons cannot tunnel and the cell is latched. The cell has two minimum state arrangements. These relative positions of the electrons in a cell are used to encode the binary states 0 and 1. The encoded states of a cell are represented by the polarizations. Fig. 1 shows the cells with polarization P=+1, P=-1 and P=0 which encodes binary information 1, 0 and null states respectively.
Binary 0
Binary 1
Null state
P=-1
P=+1
P=0
Polarisation of a qca cell is influenced by using an 1) external electric potential or 2) by the neighboring cells.
How do you achieve correct room temperature operation of QCA individual cells?
1) The gap between energy levels in a single quantum-dot must be greater than the thermal noise. 2) The difference between the two lower energy states and the third higher energy state in a QCA cell must be greater than the thermal noise.
Formation of QCA wire (Mechanism) by placing the QCA cells in a linear fashion.
Columbic interaction between the adjacent cells ->polarization of a cell -> transmission of information along the array of cells
The input cell is strongly polarized in one direction. Thus it acts as a driver to the other cells in the NULL state.
Input
Output
QCA inverter
In a wire if the cells are displaced by 45 from their path then the structure acts as a QCA inverter Fig. 10.
Input Output
Input
Fig. 10. QCA Inverter. The signal is divided into two and added back to a single wire with a 45O displaced cell.
Input B 0
1 Output
Input C
MAJ (A,B,C) = A.(B+C) + B.C .If one of the inputs is fixed to polarization P=+1 then the majority gate acts as OR gate (Fig. 11(a)) MAJ (1,B,C) = B + C
Input B -1.00 Input B
Output
Output Input C
1.00
Input C
(a)
(b)
a)majority Gate as OR gate. (b)Majority gate as AND gate. If one of the inputs is fixed to polarization P = -1 then the majority gate acts as AND gate (Fig. 12 (b)). MAJ (0,B,C) = B.C
Quantum-Dot array
A quantum dot is a part of matter whose excitons are confined in all three spatial dimensions is called as quantum dot and its interaction with their neighbors is called as quantum dot array. Due to the matching the quantum dots show dynamic behavior.
Example
Metallic islands of gold clusters Arrangement is via self organization Dimension of single island is in nanometer