Single-electron logic and memory devices

Single-electronics is believed to be the leading candidate for future digital electronics which will be able to operate at similar to 10 nm size scale and below. However, the problems of integrated single-electronics are quite serious whereby the future prospects are still uncertain. In this paper we discuss the operation principles and required parameters of several proposed families of single-electron logic, including the logic based on single-electron transistors, wireless single-electron logic and single-electron parametron. We also briefly discuss the single-electron memory which is easier to implement than logic and, hence, is more important from the practical point of view. As an example, we consider the background-charge-insensitive hybrid SET/FET memory.