Dielectica traverses through the literature on this topic – and summarizes as they appear.
Correspondence prepared by: Debdatta Panigrahi, National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, email: debdattapanigrahi123@gmail.com (21:10:2020, 10:30)
Key Words: Logic Gate, Transistor, Antiambipolar, Inverter
Tokyo: An inverter is a logic gate (termed as “NOT” gate) that is used to invert the applied input signal. Conventional binary inverters can handle two logic states, “1” and “0”. If the applied input is low (“0”) the inverter output becomes high (“1”) and vice versa. Since the early days of digital electronics, binary inverters have been one of the key components of integrated circuits and become the basic building blocks of every sophisticated electronic device that we use in our daily lives today-smartphones, laptops, tablets and many others.
Of late, we are witnessing another significant technological revolution that could possibly have even more positive impact on modern information technology, the emergence of organic semiconductor based ternary inverters which can exhibit three distinct logic states; “1”, ‘1/2” and “0”. With the approaching end of Moore’s Law (which states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years), the logic data density in binary integrated circuits can hardly be further improved due to the physical limitation. In this aspect, ternary logic can be a promising substitute to the binary logic owing to their capacity of handling higher density of information and their compatibility with low-power, high speed and less complex digital logic design technology. Ternary logic systems can drastically reduce the number of connections between devices inside the chip by transmitting more information, thereby simplifying the integrated circuit design and implementation [1].
Recently, a new genre of pn-junction transistors (termed as “antiambipolar transistors”) have been exploited for the realization of ternary inverters owing to their negative differential resistance characteristics. So far, several materials have been employed for the implementation of high performance antiambipolar transistors and low voltage operable, well balanced ternary inverters [2-4]. In particular, ternary logic circuits fabricated with organic semiconductors have several advantages compared to their inorganic counterparts [5-6]. First of all, organic semiconductors provide the advantages of easy and low-cost deposition and patterning processes. Another important advantage of this class of semiconductors is their intrinsic mechanical flexibility, which offers the scope of flexible and wearable electronics. They are capable of withstanding mechanical stresses, giving compatibility with the flexible substrates. Therefore, simultaneous attainment of mechanical flexibility and high data processability is possible in organic ternary inverters. Moreover, the strong optical absorption of the organic semiconductors enables the fine-tuning of their electronic properties, which can open up the possibility of new optoelectronic interconnection devices for next generation information technology.
Sources:
[1] S. L. Hurst, IEEE T. Comput. 12, 1160 (1984).https://www.computer.org/csdl/journal/tc/1984/12/01676392/13rRUIIVljg [2] Y. Wakayama, R. Hayakawa, Adv. Funct. Mater. 30, 1903724 (2019).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adfm.201903724 [3] M.Huang et. al. Nat. Nanotechnol. 12, 1148 (2017).
https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2017.208 [4] J. Shim et. al. ACS Nano 11, 6319, (2017).
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.7b02635 [5] K. Kobashi et. al. Nano lett. 18, 43559 (2018).
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b01357 [6] H.Yoo et. al. J. Adv. Mat. 31, 1808265 (2019). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.201808265