Unimolecular half-adders and half-subtractors based on acid-base reaction

According to the structural analysis of reported molecular processors with acids and bases as inputs, we proposed a general method for constructing molecular half-adders and/or half-subtractors based on acid-base reaction. The method is preliminarily supported by four molecular processors (8-hydroxyquinoline, 4-hydroxypyridine, 4-aminophenol and 5-amino-1-naphthol) capable of the elementary addition and/or subtraction algebraic operations. Noticeably, 8-hydroxyquinoline can mimic the functions of three logic devices, i.e. half-adder, half-subtractor and digital comparator, by the use of superposition and reconfiguration. The method described in this paper may be useful not only for designing new unimolecular arithmetical processors with the same inputs and outputs as standard devices for the construction of future molecular computers, but it can also help us disclose the simplest molecules and biomolecules with computational properties concealed around us.