Quantum-dot cellular automata circuits with reduced external fixed inputs

Nanotechnologies, notably quantum-dot cellular automata, have achieved world-wide attentions for their prominent features as compared to the conventional CMOS circuitry. Quantum-dot cellular automata, particularly owning to its considerable reduction in size, energy consumption and latency of circuits, is considered as a potential alternative for the CMOS technology. Considering the manufacturing aspects, in this paper, a method is proposed for designing efficient quantum-dot cellular automata circuits. We inspect an alternative approach for streamlined design of quantum-dot cellular automata circuits such that the required external fixed inputs are substantially reduced. In order to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method, the widely used multiplexer, XOR and party generator circuits are considered as case studies. All of the proposed circuits are simulated and verified using QCADesigner which is a valid and popular simulation tool. Comparisons indicate that the proposed method considerably reduces the number of external fixed inputs which simplifies the overall circuit implementation and fabrication. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.