A single-electron-transistor logic gate family and its application - Part I: Basic components for binary, multiple-valued and mixed-mode logic

This paper presents a model-based study of SET (Single-Electron-Transistor) logic gate family for synthesizing binary and MV (Multiple-Valued) logic circuits: The use of SETs combined with MOS transistors allows a compact realization of basic logic functions that exhibit periodic transfer characteristics. These basic SET logic gates are useful for implementing binary logic circuits, MV logic circuits and binary-MV-mixed logic circuits in a highly flexible manner. As an example, this paper describes the design of various parallel counters for carry-propagation-free arithmetic, where MV signals are effectively used to achieve higher functionality with lower hardware complexity.