An Analysis of Missing Cell Defects in Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata

While the end of Moore’s law has been predicted for many years, it appears that transistors may finally hit physical scaling limits and packing densities in the next ten to twenty years. This possibility has led to the development of many nanoelectronic devices such as carbon nanotubes, single electron transistors, molecular transistors, and quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) among others. One common issue with these nanoelectronic devices is that a large number of manufacturing defects are likely to occur. The number of these defects has been predicted to be as high as 50% of the devices. To this end, defect-tolerant architectures for nanoelectronic systems will be required. In this study, QCA wires of varying widths are examined to determine their resistance to a specific subclass of manufacturing defects: missing cells. The results show that “wide” wires can be used to offer inherent defect tolerance in a QCA system.