Abstract
Integrated circuit (IC) technology has grown tremendously over the last few decades. The prime goal has been to achieve low-power and high-performance in logic and memory devices with minimal footprint. This has lead to continuous scaling of devices and interconnects over silicon chips. Scaling of technology plays an important role for improvement of IC performance in terms of delay, signal-integrity and power-dissipation. Novel devices like FinFET, nano-electromechanical systems, graphene-FETs and single-electron transistor (SET) offer several advantages over various shortcomings of scaling. The future of IC industry is proposed to be heterogeneous 3D integration of different technologies. A SET is a potential nano device that works on quantum mechanical principle and can be co-integrated with the widely adopted complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology to enhance its performance at scaled technology nodes. To explore the feasibility of SET, an extensive literature review has been carried out in this paper. The literature review comprises comprehensively research work related to SET theory, design and fabrication. Also, the SET based computing system design is presented for room temperature operation. The extensive literature review and thereafter execution of varying analyses reveal that the SET is a potential nano-device for futuristic applications.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abdelkrim M (2019) Modeling and simulation of single-electron transistor (SET) with aluminum island using neural network. Carpath J Electron Comput Eng 12(1):23–28
Ahsan M (2018) Single electron transistor (SET): operation and application perspectives. MIST Int J Sci Technol 6:1
Amat E, Bausells J, Perez-Murano F (2017) Exploring the influence of variability on single-electron transistors into SET-based circuits. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 64(12):5172–5180
Bai Z, Liu X, Lian Z, Zhang K, Wang G, Shi SF, Pi X, Song F (2018) A silicon cluster based single electron transistor with potential room-temperature switching. Chin Phys Lett 35(3):037301
Barraud S, Duchemin I, Hutin L, Niquet Ym, Vinet M (2018) Single-electron transistor and its fabrication method. US Patent 9,911,841
Bounouar MA, Beaumont A, El Hajjam K, Calmon F, Drouin D (2012) Room temperature double gate single electron transistor based standard cell library. In: 2012 IEEE/ACM international symposium on nanoscale architectures (NANOARCH), IEEE, pp 146–151
Brunvand E (2010) Digital VLSI chip design with Cadence and Synopsys CAD tools. Addison-Wesley, New York
Castro-González F, Sarmiento-Reyes A (2014) Development of a behavioral model of the single-electron transistor for hybrid circuit simulation. In: 2014 international Caribbean conference on devices. Circuits and systems (ICCDCS), IEEE, pp 1–6
Castro F, Savidis I, Sarmiento A (2018) A quasi-analytic behavioral model for the single-electron transistor for hybrid MOS/SET circuit simulation. In: 2018 IEEE 13th nanotechnology materials and devices conference (NMDC), IEEE, pp 1–4
Chaudhari JR, Gautam D (2014) Simulation and analysis of hybrid ultra dense memory cell by using single electron transistor. 2014 international conference on electronic systems. Signal processing and computing technologies, IEEE, pp 326–330
Chen RH, Korotkov A, Likharev K (1995) A new logic family based on single-electron transistors. In: 1995 53rd annual device research conference digest, IEEE, pp 44–45
Chi Y, Sui B, Yi X, Fang L, Zhou H (2010) Advances in the modeling of single electron transistors for the design of integrated circuit. J Nanosci Nanotechnol 10(9):6131–6135
Dan SS, Mahapatra S (2010) Impact of energy quantisation in single electron transistor island on hybrid complementary metal oxide semiconductor-single electron transistor integrated circuits. IET Circ Devices Syst 4(5):449–457
Das K, Lehmann T, Rahman MT (2010) 4.2 K CMOS circuit design for digital readout of single electron transistor electrometry. In: 2010 53rd IEEE international midwest symposium on circuits and systems, IEEE, pp 865–868
Delwar TS, Biswas S, Jana A (2017) Realization of hybrid single electron transistor based low power circuits in 22 nm technology. Comput Sci Eng 20:27
Deng G (2011) Hybrid MOS and single-electron transistor architectures towards arithmetic applications. PhD thesis, University of Windsor, Canada
Deng G, Chen C (2012) A SET/MOS hybrid multiplier using frequency synthesis. IEEE Trans Very Large Scale Integr VLSI Syst 21(9):1738–1742
Deng G, Chen C (2013) A SET/MOS hybrid multiplier using frequency synthesis. IEEE Trans Very Large Scale Integr VLSI Syst 21(9):1738–1742
Deshpande V, Barraud S, Jehl X, Wacquez R, Vinet M, Coquand R, Roche B, Voisin B, Triozon F, Vizioz C et al (2013) Scaling of trigate nanowire (NW) MOSFETs to sub-7 nm width: 300 K transition to single electron transistor. Solid-State Electron 84:179–184
Deshpande V, Wacquez R, Vinet M, Jehl X, Barraud S, Coquand R, Roche B, Voisin B, Vizioz C, Previtali B, et al. (2012) 300 K operating full-CMOS integrated single electron transistor (SET)-FET circuits. In: 2012 international electron devices meeting, IEEE, pp 8–7
Deyasi A, Sarkar A (2019) Effect of temperature on electrical characteristics of single electron transistor. Microsyst Technol 25(5):1875–1880
Dubuc C, Beauvais J, Drouin D (2008) A nanodamascene process for advanced single-electron transistor fabrication. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 7(1):68–73
Durrani ZAK (2010) Single-electron devices and circuits in silicon. World Scientific, Singapore
Erdman PA, Peltonen JT, Bhandari B, Dutta B, Courtois H, Fazio R, Taddei F, Pekola JP (2019) Nonlinear thermovoltage in a single-electron transistor. Phys Rev B 99(16):165405
Eskandarian A, Rajeyan Z, Ebrahimnezhad H (2018) Analysis and simulation of single electron transistor as an analogue frequency doubler. Microelectron J 75:52–60
Fonseca L, Korotkov A, Likharev K, Odintsov A (1995) A numerical study of the dynamics and statistics of single electron systems. J Appl Phys 78(5):3238–3251
Ghosh A, Jain A, Singh NB, Sarkar SK (2016) A modified macro model approach for SPICE based simulation of single electron transistor. J Comput Electron 15(2):400–406
González FJC, Reyes AS, Saenz FJZ (2012) Effects of single-electron transistor parameter variations on hybrid circuit design. In: 2012 IEEE 3rd Latin American symposium on circuits and systems (LASCAS), IEEE, pp 1–4
Hasani M, Abbasian K, Karimian G, Asadi M (2013) Design of a half-adder using silicon quantum dot-based single-electron transistor operating at room temperature. J Electron Devices 18:1505–1509
Hosseini VK, Ahmadi MT, Ismail R (2018) Analysis and modeling of fullerene single electron transistor based on quantum dot arrays at room temperature. J Electron Mater 47(8):4799–4806
Hu C, Cotofana S, Jiang J (2004) Digital to analogue converter based on single-electron tunnelling transistor. IEE Proc Circ Devices Syst 151(5):438–442
Inokawa H, Nishimura T, Singh A, Satoh H, Takahashi Y (2018) Ultrahigh-frequency characteristics of single-electron transistor. In: 2018 IEEE international conference on electron devices and solid state circuits (EDSSC), IEEE, pp 1–2
Jacob AP, Xie R, Sung MG, Liebmann L, Lee RT, Taylor B (2017) Scaling challenges for advanced CMOS devices. Int J High Speed Electron Syst 26(01n02):1740001
Jain A, Ghosh A, Singh NB, Sarkar SK (2015) A new SPICE macro model of single electron transistor for efficient simulation of single-electronics circuits. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 82(3):653–662
Jana B, Jana A, Basak S, Sing JK, Sarkar SK (2014) Design and performance analysis of reversible logic based ALU using hybrid single electron transistor. In: 2014 recent advances in engineering and computational sciences (RAECS), IEEE, pp 1–4
Jia C, Chaohong H, Cotofana SD, Jianfei J (2004) SPICE implementation of a compact single electron tunneling transistor model. In: 4th IEEE conference on nanotechnology, pp 392–395
Karbasian G, Orlov AO, Snider GL (2015) Nanodamascene metal-insulator-metal single electron transistor prepared by atomic layer deposition of tunnel barrier and subsequent reduction of metal surface oxide. In: 2015 silicon nanoelectronics workshop (SNW), IEEE, pp 1–2
Keyser U, Schumacher HW, Zeitler U, Haug RJ, Eberl K (2000) Fabrication of a single-electron transistor by current-controlled local oxidation of a two-dimensional electron system. Appl Phys Lett 76(4):457–459
KhademHosseini V, Dideban D, Ahmadi MT, Ismail R (2018) An analytical approach to model capacitance and resistance of capped carbon nanotube single electron transistor. AEU Int J Electron Commun 90:97–102
Kim JH, Lee YK, You H, An SJ, Kim Th (2014) Single electron transistor and method for fabricating the same. US Patent App. 14/199,505
Kim JH, Lee YK, You H, An SJ, Kim Th (2016) Method for fabricating single electron transistor. US Patent 9,281,484
Kim N, Hansen K, Paraoanu S, Pekola J (2003) Fabrication of Nb-based superconducting single electron transistor. Phys B 329:1519–1520
Krautschneider W, Kohlhase A, Terletzki H (1997) Scaling down and reliability problems of gigabit CMOS circuits. Microelectron Reliabil 37(1):19–37
Kuhn K, Kenyon C, Kornfeld A, Liu M, Maheshwari A, Wk Shih, Sivakumar S, Taylor G, VanDerVoorn P, Zawadzki K (2008) Managing process variation in Intel’s 45 nm CMOS technology. Int Technol J 12:2
Lageweg C, Cotofana S, Vassiliadis S (2002) Static buffered SET based logic gates. In: Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE conference on nanotechnology, IEEE, pp 491–494
Lee CH, Kim SW, Lee JU, Seo SH, Kang GC, Roh KS, Kim KY, Lee SY, Kim DM, Kim DH (2007) Design of a robust analog-to-digital converter based on complementary SET/CMOS hybrid amplifier. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 6(6):667–675
Li P, Liao W, Kuo DM, Lin S, Chen P, Lu S, Tsai MJ (2004) Fabrication of a germanium quantum-dot single-electron transistor with large Coulomb-blockade oscillations at room temperature. Appl Phys Lett 85(9):1532–1534
Li Q, Cai L, Zhou Y, Wu G, Wang S (2008) Design and simulation of logic circuits by combined single-electron/MOS transistor structures. In: 2008 3rd IEEE international conference on nano/micro engineered and molecular systems, IEEE, pp 210–214
Lientschnig G, Weymann I, Hadley P (2003) Simulating hybrid circuits of single-electron transistors and field-effect transistors. Jpn J Appl Phys 42(10R):6467
Likharev KK (1999) Single-electron devices and their applications. Proc IEEE 87(4):606–632
Li-Na S, Li L, Xin-Xing L, Hua Q, Xiao-Feng G (2015) Fabrication and characterization of a single electron transistor based on a silicon-on-insulator. Chin Phys Lett 32(4):047301
Maeda K, Okabayashi N, Kano S, Takeshita S, Tanaka D, Sakamoto M, Teranishi T, Majima Y (2012) Logic operations of chemically assembled single-electron transistor. ACS Nano 6(3):2798–2803
Mahapatra S, Ionescu AM (2005) Realization of multiple valued logic and memory by hybrid SETMOS architecture. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 4(6):705–714
Mahapatra S, Ionescu AM (2006) Hybrid CMOS single-electron-transistor device and circuit design. Artech House, Inc, London
Mahapatra S, Vaish V, Wasshuber C, Banerjee K, Ionescu AM (2004) Analytical modeling of single electron transistor for hybrid CMOS-SET analog IC design. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 51(11):1772–1782
Mahapatra S, Banerjee K, Pegeon F, Ionescu AM (2003) A CAD framework for co-design and analysis of CMOS-SET hybrid integrated circuits. In: ICCAD-2003. In: International conference on computer aided design (IEEE Cat. No. 03CH37486), IEEE, pp 497–502
Malvino AP, Brown JA (1977) Digital computer electronics. McGraw-Hill, Gregg Division, New York
Miralaie M, Mir A (2016) Performance analysis of single-electron transistor at room-temperature for periodic symmetric functions operation. J Eng 10:352–356
Miralaie M, Mir A (2018) Evaluation of room-temperature performance of ultra-small single-electron transistor-based analog-to-digital convertors. J Circ Syst Comput 27(14):1850217
Miralaie M, Leilaeioun M, Abbasian K, Hasani M (2014) Modeling and analysis of room-temperature silicon quantum dot-based single-electron transistor logic gates. J Comput Theor Nanosci 11(1):15–24
Mukherjee S, Delwar TS, Jana A, Sarkar SK (2014) Hybrid single electron transistor based low power consuming 4-bit parallel adder/subtractor circuit in 65 nanometer technology. In: 2014 17th international conference on computer and information technology (ICCIT), IEEE, pp 136–140
Mukherjee S, Jana B, Jana A, Sing JK, Sarkar SK (2014) Hybrid single electron transistor based octal to binary encoder in 22 nanometer technology. In: 2014 international conference on control. instrumentation, communication and computational technologies (ICCICCT), IEEE, pp 26–30
Mukherjee S, Jana A, Sarkar SK (2015) Hybrid single electron transistor-based low power consuming BCD adder circuit in 65 nanometer technology. In: Computational advancement in communication circuits and systems. Springer, pp 375–381
Nugraha MI, Darma Y (2012) Coulomb blockade effect simulation to the electrical characteristic of silicon based single electron transistor. AIP Conf Proc Ame Inst Phys 1454:211–214
Ono Y, Inokawa H, Takahashi Y, Nishiguchi K, Fujiwara A (2010) Single-electron transistor and its logic application. Nanotechnol Online 20:45–68
Ou X, Wu NJ (2005) Analog–digital and digital-analog converters using single-electron and MOS transistors. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 4(6):722–729
Parekh R (2013) Simulation and design methodology for hybrid SET-CMOS logic at room temperature operation. PhD thesis, Université de Sherbrooke, Library and Archives Canada
Parekh R (2019) Design and simulation of single electron transistor based SRAM and its memory controller at room temperature. Int J Integrat Eng 11(6):186–195
Parekh R, Beaumont A, Beauvais J, Drouin D (2012) Simulation and design methodology for hybrid SET-CMOS integrated logic at 22-nm room-temperature operation. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 59(4):918–923
Parekh R, Beauvais J, Drouin D (2014) SET logic driving capability and its enhancement in 3-D integrated SET-CMOS circuit. Microelectron J 45(8):1087–1092
Park KS, Kim SJ, Baek IB, Lee WH, Kang JS, Jo YB, Lee SD, Lee CK, Choi JB, Kim JH et al (2005) SOI single-electron transistor with low RC delay for logic cells and SET/FET hybrid ICs. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 4(2):242–248
Patel R, Agrawal Y, Parekh R (2019) Design of prominent set-based high performance computing system. IET Circ Dev Syst 14(2):159–167
Patel R, Agrawal Y, Parekh R (2018) A vector file generation program for simulating single electron transistor based computing system. In: 2018 IEEE electron devices Kolkata conference (EDKCON), IEEE, pp 647–650
Prager AA, George HC, Orlov AO, Snider GL (2011) Experimental demonstration of hybrid CMOS-single electron transistor circuits. J Vacuum Sci Technol B Nanotechnol Microelectron Mater Process Meas Phenom 29(4):041004
Raut VP (2017) Design and implementation of hybrid multiple valued logic error detector using single electron transistor and CMOS at 120nm technology. In: IOP conference series: materials science and engineering, IOP Publishing, vol 225, p 012160
Raut V, Dakhole P (2014) Design and implementation of single electron transistor N-BIT multiplier. In: 2014 international conference on circuits, power and computing technologies [ICCPCT-2014], IEEE, pp 1099–1104
Raut V, Dakhole P (2015) Design and implementation of four bit arithmetic and logic unit using hybrid single electron transistor and MOSFET at 120 nm technology. In: 2015 international conference on pervasive computing (ICPC), IEEE, pp 1–6
Raut V, Dakhole P (2016) Design and implementation of quaternary summation circuit with single electron transistor and MOSFET. In: 2016 international conference on electrical, electronics, and optimization techniques (ICEEOT), IEEE, pp 2226–2229
Sahafi A, Moaiyeri MH, Navi K, Hashemipour O (2013) Efficient single-electron transistor inverter-based logic circuits and memory elements. J Comput Theor Nanosci 10(5):1171–1178
Schumacher H, Keyser U, Zeitler U, Haug R, Eberl K (2000) Controlled mechanical AFM machining of two-dimensional electron systems: fabrication of a single-electron transistor. Phys E 6(1–4):860–863
Shirriff K (2019) Inside the ALU of the 8085 microprocessor. http://www.righto.com/2013/01/inside-alu-of-8085-microprocessor.html
Sui B, Fang L, Zhang C (2011) Reconfigurable logic based on tunable periodic characteristics of single-electron transistor. In: 2011 24th Canadian conference on electrical and computer engineering (CCECE), IEEE, pp 000485–000488
Sun Y, Singh N et al (2010) Room-temperature operation of silicon single-electron transistor fabricated using optical lithography. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 10(1):96–98
Tannu S, Sharma A (2012) Low power random number generator using single electron transistor. In: 2012 international conference on communication, information and computing technology (ICCICT), IEEE, pp 1–4
Tsiolakis T, Alexiou GP, Konofaos N (2010a) Low power single electron OR/NOR gate operating at 10GHz. In: 2010 IEEE computer society annual symposium on VLSI, IEEE, pp 273–276
Tsiolakis T, Konofaos N, Alexiou GP (2010b) A complementary single-electron 4-bit multiplexer. In: 2nd Asia symposium on quality electronic design (ASQED), IEEE, pp 264–271
Tucker J (1992) Complementary digital logic based on the Coulomb blockade. J Appl Phys 72(9):4399–4413
Uchida K, Matsuzawa K, Koga J, Ohba R, Si Takagi, Toriumi A (2000) Analytical single-electron transistor (SET) model for design and analysis of realistic SET circuits. Jpn J Appl Phys 39(4S):2321
Venkataratnam A, Goel AK (2008) Design and simulation of logic circuits with hybrid architectures of single-electron transistors and conventional MOS devices at room temperature. Microelectron J 39(12):1461–1468
Wang Q, Chen Y, Long S, Niu J, Wang C, Jia R, Chen B, Liu M, Ye T (2007) Fabrication and characterization of single electron transistor on SOI. Microelectron Eng 84(5–8):1647–1651
Wasshuber C (2001) Computational single-electronics. Springer, Berlin
Wei W, Han J, Lombardi F (2012) Design and evaluation of a hybrid memory cell by single-electron transfer. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 12(1):57–70
Wen Y, Ares N, Schupp F, Pei T, Briggs G, Laird E (2020) A coherent nanomechanical oscillator driven by single-electron tunnelling. Nat Phys 16(1):75–82
Willy F, Darma Y (2016) Modeling and simulation of single electron transistor with master equation approach. In: Journal of Physics: conference series, IOP Publishing, vol 739, p 012048
Yu YS, Hwang SW, Ahn D (1999) Macromodeling of single-electron transistors for efficient circuit simulation. IEEE Trans Electron Devices 46(8):1667–1671
Yu Y, Oh JH, Hwang S, AHN D (2000) Implementation of single electron circuit simulation by SPICE: KOSEC-SPICE. Proc Asia Pac Workshop Fundam Appl Adv Semicond Device 100(150):85–90
Zhang W, Wu NJ, Hashizume T, Kasai S (2007) Novel hybrid voltage controlled ring oscillators using single electron and MOS transistors. IEEE Trans Nanotechnol 6(2):146–157
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Patel, R., Agrawal, Y. & Parekh, R. Single-electron transistor: review in perspective of theory, modelling, design and fabrication. Microsyst Technol 27, 1863–1875 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-020-05002-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-020-05002-5