ANALYSIS AND MODULATION OF MOLECULAR QUANTUM-DOT CELLULAR AUTOMATA (QCA) DEVICES

Abstract

Field-Coupled nanocomputing (FCN) paradigms offer fundamentally new approaches for digital computing without involving current transistors. Such paradigms perform computations using local field interactions between nanoscale building blocks which are organized with purposes. Among several FCN paradigms currently under active investigation, the Molecular Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (MQCA) is found to be the most promising and its unique features make it attractive as a candidate for post-CMOS nanocomputing. MQCA is based on electrostatic interactions among quantum cells with nanometer scale eliminating the need of charge transportation, hence its energy consumption is significantly decreased. Meanwhile it also possesses the potential of high throughput if efficient pipelining of information propagation is introduced. This could be realized adopting external clock signals which precisely control the adiabatic switching and direction of data flow in MQCA circuits. In this work, in order to model MQCA as electronic devices and analyze its information propagation with clock taken into account, an effective algorithm based on ab-initio simulations and modelling of molecular interactions has been applied in presence of a proposed clock mechanism for MQCA, including the binary wire, the wire bus and the majority voter. The quantitative results generated depict compelling clocked information propagation phenomena of MQCA devices and most importantly, provide crucial feedback for future MQCA experimental implementations