Coulomb Blockade and Digital Single-Electron Devices

TL;DR

This paper reviews the physics of single-electron tunneling and discusses the development of ultradense digital single-electron circuits, emphasizing their potential for molecular electronics and the challenges related to energy spectrum and tunnel barriers.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the physics, device operation, and design considerations for future single-electron digital circuits at the molecular scale.

Findings

Single-electron tunneling is well understood both theoretically and experimentally.

Ultradense single-electron circuits are promising for future nanoelectronics.

Energy spectrum and tunnel barrier issues are critical for molecular-size devices.

Abstract

Tunneling of single electrons has been thoroughly studied both theoretically and experimentally during last ten years. By the present time the basic physics is well understood, and creation of useful single-electron devices becomes the important issue. Single-electron tunneling seems to be the most promising candidate to be used in the future integrated digital circuits with the typical size scale of few nanometers and below, i.e. in the molecular electronics. In the review we first briefly discuss the physics of single-electron tunneling and the operation of the single-electron transistor. After that, we concentrate on the hypothetical ultradense digital single-electron circuits and discuss the different proposed families of them. The last part of the review considers the issues of the discrete energy spectrum and the finite tunnel barrier height which are important for the molecular-size single-electron devices.