Electric field measurement for quantum‐dot cellular automata clocking circuits
Minjun Yan · Surface and Interface Analysis · 2008
Abstract Bistable molecules under electric field are being investigated for the concept of quantum‐dot cellular automata (QCA). Different configurations of molecular arrays implement various logic devices and circuits. The electric field emitted from underlying metal wires, which are applied with clock signal, not only enables power gain, but also fulfills pipelining computation. It might be convenient to measure the electric field distribution directly from these metal wires. A pseudo‐quantitative method was developed to map the electric field distribution with electrostatic force microscopy. This method converts the phase signal into the electric field intensity, by which we demonstrated how to use a particular electric field distribution to drive the computation of QCA molecules. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.