We report in Advanced Materials a Single-Electron Logic Calculator (SELC) based on a gated Au/S-(CH2)3-Fc-(CH2)9-S/Au junction. It takes advantage of the unique electronic structure of two adjacent molecular orbitals (MOs) of Fc and the orthogonal control of MOs via Vb, Vg. SELC implements all universal logic gates within a single-molecule device with low voltage.
Controllable single-molecule logic operations would enable development of reliable ultra-minimalistic circuit elements for high-density computing but require stable currents from multiple orthogonal inputs in molecular junctions. Utilizing the two unique adjacent conductive molecular orbitals (MOs) of gated Au/S-(CH2)3-Fc-(CH2)9-S/Au (Fc=ferrocene) single-electron transistors (~2 nm), we present a stable Single-Electron Logic Calculator (SELC) allowing real-time modulation of output current as a function of orthogonal input bias (Vb) and gate (Vg) voltages. Reliable and low-voltage (ǀVbǀ≤80 mV, ǀVgǀ≤2 V) operations of SELC depend upon the unambiguous association of current resonances with energy shifts of the MOs (which show an invariable, small energy separation of ~100 meV) in response to the changes of voltages, which is confirmed by electron transport calculations. Stable multi-logic operations based on the SELC modulated current conversions between the two resonances and Coulomb blockade regimes were demonstrated via the implementation of all universal 1-input (YES/NOT/PASS_1/PASS_0) and 2-input (AND/XOR/OR/NAND/NOR/INT/XNOR) logic gates.
References:
Ran Liu, Yingmei Han, Feng Sun, Gyan Khatri, Jaesuk Kwon, Cameron Nickle, Lejia Wang, Chuan-Kui Wang, Damien Thompson, Zong-Liang Li, Christian A. Nijhuis, and Enrique del Barco
“Stable Universal 1- and 2-Input Single-Molecule Logic Gates”
Advanced Materials (First published: 12 May 2022)
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