Multiple-Valued Inverter Using a Single-Electron-Tunneling Circuit (Special Issue on Integrated Electronics and New System Paradigms)

SUMMARY A multiple-valued logic inverter is proposed that uses single-electron-tunneling (SET) circuits in which the discreteness of the electron charge is utilized.The inverter circuit, which is composed of only two SET transistors, has a memory function as well as an inverter function for multiple-valued logic.A quantizing circuit and a D flip-flop circuit for multiplevalued logic can be compactly constructed by combining two inverters.A threshold device can be compactly constructed by attaching more than one input capacitor to the inverter circuit. A quaternary full adder circuit can be constructed by using two threshold devices.Implementation issues are also discussed.