Quantum cellular automata: Introduction:

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

Fig. 7. QCA Cell Polarization used to encode binary information

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.

QCA wire(inverter chain):

QCA cells arranged in a linear fashion act as a wire . A QCA wire functions by transferring columbic interactions from one cell to the next as shown in Fig. 8.
Input Output

Fig. 8. QCA Cells in a linear arrangement acting as a wire.

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

Fig. 9. 45O rotated Cells in a linear arrangement acting as aninverted wire.

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

Fig. 10. Inverter with 45o displaced wire.

In this structure, the gate attains the ground state when oppositely polarized input and output wires are connected with 45O displacement. In order to avoid signal integrity issues, a different structure shown in Fig. 10 is commonly used as inverter.

Input

Fig. 10. QCA Inverter. The signal is divided into two and added back to a single wire with a 45O displaced cell.

QCA Majority gate:

In a majority gate three input cells vote on the polarization of a single cell and the majority wins. The majority gate can be used to create AND gate and OR gate Fig. 11.
Input A 1

Input B 0

1 Output

Input C

Fig. 11. Majority Gate

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

Advantage of QCA Circuits

easier logic mapping and minimal routing requirements

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

Application: Quantum computer.

Solving nonlinear differential equations in QCA network. Associative information storage system. Image processing.