Optimal demultiplexer unit design and energy estimation using quantum dot cellular automata

Quantum dot cellular automata (QCA)-based demultiplexer or DeMUX is a basic module of nanocommunication and nanocomputation, like a multiplexer. However, the design and analysis of demultiplexer using QCA have been neglected by researchers, unlike multiplexer. This article proposed and analyzed a simple and optimized QCA-based single-layered demultiplexer only using two majority gates, one inverter and two clocks. Our proposed area-efficient DeMUX has a complexity of 21 QCA cells, which covered a total area of 20,412 nm 2 and a cell area of 6804 nm 2 with area usage of 33.33%. The latency of the proposed block is 0.5 clock, and the calculated cost is 20. The energy dissipation analysis using QDE tool shows that the total energy dissipation is 8.64e−003 eV and the average energy dissipation per cycle is 7.85e−004 eV of QCA demultiplexer. Also, energy has been calculated using the popular tool QCAPro in three tunneling levels with $$\gamma =0.5E_{\mathrm{K}},\gamma =1.0E_{\mathrm{K}}$$ γ = 0.5 E K , γ = 1.0 E K and $$\gamma =1.5E_{\mathrm{K}}$$ γ = 1.5 E K at 2K temperature, and the total energy dissipated as 32.86 meV, 41.41 meV and 52.21 meV, respectively.