Single-electron logic and memory devices

Single-electronics is believed to be the leading candidate for future digital electronics which will be able to operate at ~ 10 nm size scale and below. However, the problems of integrated single-electronics are quite serious whereby the future prospects are still uncertain. In this paper we discuss the operation principles and required parameters of several proposed families of single-electron logic, including the logic based on single-electron transistors, wireless single-electron logic and single-electron parametron. We also briefly discuss the single-electron memory which is easier to implement than logic and, hence, is more important from the practical point of view. As an example, we consider the background-charge-insensitive hybrid SET/FET memory.