Electrical addressing of confined quantum systems for quasiclassical computation and finite state logic machines

Addressing the Challenge of Molecular Change: An Interim Report

Invited by the editorial committee of the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry to "contribute my autobiography," I present it here, as I understand the term. It is about my parents, my mentors, my coworkers, and my friends in learning and the scientific problems that we tried to address. Courtesy of the editorial assistance of Annual Reviews, some of the science is in the figure captions and sidebars. I am by no means done: I am currently trying to fuse the quantitative rigor of physical chemistry with systems biology while also dealing with a post-Born-Oppenheimer regime in electronic dynamics and am attempting to instruct molecules to perform advanced logic.

A continuous and multi valued system as molecular answer for data processing and data storage

Two molecular logic systems are presented with two independent input factors resulting in a continuous system and a system with a quaternary basis.

Molecular decision trees realized by ultrafast electronic spectroscopy

The outcome of a light-matter interaction depends on both the state of matter and the state of light. It is thus a natural setting for implementing bilinear classical logic. A description of the state of a time-varying system requires measuring an (ideally complete) set of time-dependent observables. Typically, this is prohibitive, but in weak-field spectroscopy we can move toward this goal because only a finite number of levels are accessible. Recent progress in nonlinear spectroscopies means that nontrivial measurements can be implemented and thereby give rise to interesting logic schemes where the outputs are functions of the observables. Lie algebra offers a natural tool for generating the outcome of the bilinear light-matter interaction. We show how to synthesize these ideas by explicitly discussing three-photon spectroscopy of a bichromophoric molecule for which there are four accessible states. Switching logic would use the on-off occupancies of these four states as outcomes. Here, we explore the use of all 16 observables that define the time-evolving state of the bichromophoric system. The bilinear laser-system interaction with the three pulses of the setup of a 2D photon echo spectroscopy experiment can be used to generate a rich parallel logic that corresponds to the implementation of a molecular decision tree. Our simulations allow relaxation by weak coupling to the environment, which adds to the complexity of the logic operations.

Integrated logic circuits using single-atom transistors

Scaling down the size of computing circuits is about to reach the limitations imposed by the discrete atomic structure of matter. Reducing the power requirements and thereby dissipation of integrated circuits is also essential. New paradigms are needed to sustain the rate of progress that society has become used to. Single-atom transistors, SATs, cascaded in a circuit are proposed as a promising route that is compatible with existing technology. We demonstrate the use of quantum degrees of freedom to perform logic operations in a complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor device. Each SAT performs multilevel logic by electrically addressing the electronic states of a dopant atom. A single electron transistor decodes the physical multivalued output into the conventional binary output. A robust scalable circuit of two concatenated full adders is reported, where by utilizing charge and quantum degrees of freedom, the functionality of the transistor is pushed far beyond that of a simple switch.

Logic implementations using a single nanoparticle-protein hybrid

A Set-Reset machine is the simplest logic circuit with a built-in memory. Its output is a (nonlinear) function of the input and of the state stored in the machine's memory. Here, we report a nanoscale Set-Reset machine operating at room temperature that is based on a 5-nm silicon nanoparticle attached to the inner pore of a stable circular protein. The nanoparticle-protein hybrid can also function as a balanced ternary multiplier. Conductive atomic force microscopy is used to implement the logic input and output operations, and the processing of the logic Set and Reset operations relies on the finite capacitance of the nanoparticle provided by the good electrical isolation given by the protein, thus enabling stability of the logic device states. We show that the machine can be cycled, such that in every successive cycle, the previous state in the memory is retained as the present state. The energy cost of one cycle of computation is minimized to the cost of charging this state.

Redox-Executed Logic Operations through the Reversible Voltammetric Response Characteristics of Electroactive Self-Assembled Monolayers

We propose charge quantization in electrochemical oxidation–reduction (redox) systems as a route to performing logical operations efficiently and reversibly. The theory is based on the interfacial potential distribution for electrodes coated with electroactive self-assembled molecular films. We monitor the change in the oxidation number by studying the current as a function of the working and reference electrode potentials and of the temperature. Diamond-shaped regions can be defined that delineate the stability of a given redox species as a function of the applied and reference potentials. Using these electrochemical Coulomb diamonds, we then show the principles for the design of a complete set of binary gates and a finite-state set–reset machine. We demonstrate the analogies between these redox systems and nanoscale solid-state systems where the charging energy is finite. Redox systems allow simple logic operations at room temperature because typically the standard potential is higher than the thermal energy.

Concatenated logic gates using four coupled biocatalysts operating in series

The assembly of three concatenated enzyme-based logic gates consisting of OR, AND, XOR is described. Four biocatalysts, acetylcholine esterase, choline oxidase, microperoxidase-11, and the NAD+-dependent glucose dehydrogenase, are used to assemble the gates. Four inputs that include acetylcholine, butyrylcholine, O2, and glucose are used to drive the concatenated-gates system. The cofactor NAD+, and its reduced 1,4-dihydro form, NADH, are used as a reporter couple, and these provide an optical output for the gates. The modulus of the absorbance changes of NADH is used as a readout signal.

Logic Gates and Elementary Computing by Enzymes

Different selected enzymes, glucose oxidase (GOx), catalase (Cat), glucose dehydrogenase (GDH), horseradish peroxidase (HRP), and formaldehyde dehydrogenase (FDH), are used alone or coupled to construct eight different logic gates. The added substrates for the respective enzymes, glucose and H(2)O(2), act as the gate inputs, while the biocatalytically generated gluconic acid or NADH are the output signals that follow the operation of the gates. Different enzyme-based gates are XOR, INHIBIT A, INHIBIT B, AND, OR, NOR, Identity and Inverter gates. By combining the AND and XOR or the XOR and INHIBIT A gates, the half-adder and half-subtractor are constructed, respectively, opening the way to elementary computing by the use of enzymes.

Electrical transport in saturated and conjugated molecular wires

The mechanism for charge transport in dithio molecular wires tethered between two gold electrodes is investigated, using both a steady state and a time-dependent quantum mechanical approach. The interface with the electrodes is modeled by two gold clusters and the electronic structure of the entire Au(n)-S-bridge-S-Au(n) system is computed ab initio at the DFT level and semi-empirically, with the extended Hückel theory. Current vs. applied bias, I-V, curves are computed using a scattering Landauer-type formalism in a steady state picture. The applied source-drain and gate voltages are included at the ab initio level in the electronic Hamiltonian and found to influence strongly the I-V characteristics. The time evolution of a non stationary electronic wave packet initially localized on a gold atom at one end of the extended system shows that charge transfer proceeds sequentially, by a hopping mechanism, to the opposite end. Analysis of the effective one electron Hamiltonian matrix shows that the sulfur atom endows a resistive character to the Au-C-S junctions. The S atoms are however rather well coupled to both the gold and carbon atoms so that typically the super exchange limit for electron transfer is not reached unless the molecular bridge is saturated and the Fermi window function is narrow.

Molecule-Based Photonically Switched Half and Full Adder

A single molecule logic gate using electronically excited states and ionization/fragmentation can take advantage of the differences in cross-sections for one and two photon absorption. Fault tolerant optically pumped half adder and full adder are discussed as applications. A full adder requires two separate additions, and the logic concatenation that is required to implement this is physically achieved by an intramolecular transfer along the side chain of 2-phenylethyl-N,N-dimethylamine (PENNA). Solutions of the kinetic equations for the temporal evolution of the concentration of different states in the presence of time-varying laser fields are used to illustrate the high contrast ratios that are potentially possible for such devices.

Molecular electronics: some views on transport junctions and beyond

The field of molecular electronics comprises a fundamental set of issues concerning the electronic response of molecules as parts of a mesoscopic structure and a technology-facing area of science. We will overview some important aspects of these subfields. The most advanced ideas in the field involve the use of molecules as individual logic or memory units and are broadly based on using the quantum state space of the molecule. Current work in molecular electronics usually addresses molecular junction transport, where the molecule acts as a barrier for incoming electrons: This is the fundamental Landauer idea of "conduction as scattering" generalized to molecular junction structures. Another point of view in terms of superexchange as a guiding mechanism for coherent electron transfer through the molecular bridge is discussed. Molecules generally exhibit relatively strong vibronic coupling. The last section of this overview focuses on vibronic effects, including inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy, hysteresis in junction charge transport, and negative differential resistance in molecular transport junctions.