BISTABLE SATURATION DUE TO SINGLE-ELECTRON CHARGING IN RINGS OF TUNNEL-JUNCTIONS

The behavior of rings of four small-capacitance tunnel junctions that are charged with two extra electrons is examined. Single electron char ging effects result in quantization of charge on the metal electrode i slands. To minimize the total electrostatic energy, the electrons loca lize on opposite electrodes, leading to a charge alignment in one of t wo configurations. We consider such rings as cells that may be capacit ively coupled to each other in a cellular automaton architecture. The interaction between cells results in strong bistable saturation in the cell's charge alignment which may be used to encode binary informatio n. Lines of such cells can be viewed as binary wires.