TABLE OF CONTENTS The conventional approach to improve the performance of circuits is to scale down the devices and technologies. This is also convenient to lower the power consumption per function. In this chapter, we overview the potential of nanotechnologies for this purpose, with emphasis on few-electron devices in the case of room-temperature operation. Other devices, especially carbon nanotube transistors, resonant tunnelling diodes and quantum cellular automata, are briefly discussed.
Keywords: nanotechnologies; Single Electron Transistor; SET; molecular electronics; RTD; QCA; low power; Coulomb blockade
In addition to packing-density increase and speed improvement, the downscaling of technologies comes with a reduction of the power consumption per function. However this gain is offset by the tremendous increase in the number of transistors per chip. A possible solution is to go further towards nano-scale devices where a lower amount of charge is needed to code a bit. This is the basis of what is known as single electronics. The use of molecules could be a realistic way to fabricate these tiny devices and other useful nanostructures.
In this chapter we overview the potential of nanodevices for low power electronics with emphasis on few-electron electronics in the case of room-temperature (RT) operation. Other devices, especially carbon nanotube transistors, resonant tunnelling diodes (RTD) and quantum cellular automata (QCA), are briefly discussed.
In CMOS circuits, the total power consumption is the sum of the dynamic power and of the contribution of leakages. For advanced technology generations the later is...
