Electronics at Smaller and Smaller Length Scales – Mesoscopic Logic Gates: A Brief Review

Abstract

In the present review we inspect two-terminal electron transport through some mesoscopic rings and try to explore how these simple rings can be utilized to design classical logic gates at mesoscale level. Using such rings we can design all possible logic gates like, OR, AND, NOT, NOR, NAND, XOR and XNOR gates, but here we illustrate only three primary logic gate operations for the sake of simplicity. We adopt a tight-binding Hamiltonian to describe the model where a mesoscopic ring is attached to two semi-infinite one-dimensional non-magnetic electrodes. Based on single particle Green’s function formalism all calculations which describe two-terminal conductance and current through the quantum ring are performed numerically. Our analysis may be helpful in fabricating mesoscale logic gates and electronic circuits at smaller length scales.