Single Electron Tunneling Junctions

This paper and its associated Python programs explore the dynamics of single electron tunneling junction (SETJ) circuits. SETJs can potentially be used as nonlinear circuit elements to implement new paradigms for information processing. I show that an isolated SETJ circuit with a constant bias voltage and sinusoidal pump offset can produce a variety of interesting nonlinear behavior. By adjusting certain input parameters, the frequency and phase of tunneling events can become entrained to any super-harmonic of the pump, although the robustness of the basins of attraction typically diminishes as we increase the tunneling period. Capacitively coupled SETJs can interact to display new types of behavior, as the voltage across one tunneling junction will influence the voltage of its neighbors. After looking at the behavior exhibited by two-coupled SETJs, I examine the mutual interaction and tunneling outputs of arbitrarily large MxN SETJ arrays. Introduction Single electron tunneling junctions (SETJs) offer an opportunity to not only downsize electronic components, but also to enhance the functionality of large arrays of components by exploiting their nonlinear dynamics to access an emergent level of information processing. However, nanoparticle arrays of capacitively coupled SETJs have many interacting variables and associated parameters that gives rise to a complexity that is useful only to the extent that we understand these dynamics. Therefore, to better understand the range of behavior allowed by such tunneling junctions, I have studied the dynamics of isolated SETJ circuits, two-coupled SETJ circuits, and finally one-dimensional and two-dimensional systems of arbitrary size. I show how one can alter the behavior of an isolated SETJ, and explore how parameter values can change the behavior of large SETJ networks.