单电子存储器

介绍了单电子存储器的发展情况和几种单电子存储器的基本特性,并将库仑阻塞效应作为存储器工作的理论基础进行了讨论。随着传统存储器集成度的不断提高,每个存储单元的电子数目不断减少,并逐渐接近其极限,使传统存储器的发展面临困难。采用单电子存储器有望解决这个困难,它们通常具有单个量子点或者是多隧穿结结构,存储一个比特的信息只需要精确控制增加或者减少一定数目的电子就可以实现。单电子器件的工作通常只需要很少的电子甚至一个电子就可以实现,具有高速和低功耗的特点,因此可以实现信息超高密度存储。与单电子逻辑电路相比,单电子存储器更容易解决随机背景电荷涨落的问题,因此从实际应用的角度来看,单电子存储器的应用前景更为光明。

Single-electron memories

This paper gives a brief review of recent progress on single-electron memories and discusses the intrinsic characteristics of some kinds of single-electron memories,and the Coulomb blockade effect as the basic principle of the operation of single-electron memory is also discussed.Further progress of the conventional memories is very much in doubt ,mostly because of problems with scaling down memory cells.A single-electron memory cell often has a structure of a single quantum dot(QD)or multiple-tunnel junction(MTJ ),one bit of information in which is represented by the excess or shortfall of a precise number of electrons.So the cells of single-electron memories need fewer electrons,and they have high speed and low-power consumption.They can overcome inherent problems to conventional semiconductor devices,and achieve ultradense data storage.Comparing with single-electron logic circuits,single-electron memories are one of the most promising single-electron devices from the practical point of view,because background charge fluctuations can be solved much easier for single-electron memories based on the Coulomb blockade(CB)effects.