Programmable Single Electron Transistor: A Modified Macro-Model & Its Applications

Single Electron Transistor (SET) is the most promising candidate for future performance in nanoelectronic devices because of its two characteristics- low power consumption and small size. SETs have a very controlled transport of single elementary charges through a metallic island and can function as transistor just like a conventional FET. A SET having nonvolatile memory element is the key factor for programmable SET logic. This paper proposes for a modified macro-model of programmable SET and presents analysis of its programmability. In the modified macro-model, the I-V characteristics is improved by using a voltage controlled current source between drain and source nodes which is controlled by the gate to source voltage. The nonvolatile memory node is realized by using an additional gate. Different types of logic gates are constructed using this modified macro-model of programmable single electron transistors which works just like MOSFETs. But the advantage here is that only one electron is allowed to pass through the junctions at a time and so it takes low power to operate them than the conventional MOSFETs. How programmable SET can be obtained from a conventional SET is shown in this work. So this newly built macro-model has programmability.