A Balanced CMOS Compatible Ternary Memristor-NMOS Logic Family and Its Application

Abstract

Balanced ternary digital logic circuits based on memristors and MOSFET devices are introduced. First, balanced ternary minimum gate TMIN, maximum gate TMAX and ternary inverters are designed and verified by simulation. Next, logic circuits such as ternary encoders, decoders and multiplexers are designed using these three basic gates. For further validation, a ternary 3-1 encoder was hardware-implemented successfully using in-house fabricated memristors and MOS transistors. Two different design approaches, namely the decoder-based method and the multiplexer-based method are introduced and applied to realize combinational logic circuits such as balanced ternary half-adder, multiplier, and numerical comparator. We simulate the circuits using 50nm CMOS technology parameters and BSIM models and present comparisons and analyses of the two design methods in view of the power consumption and component device counts, which can guide subsequent research and development of integrated multi-valued logic circuits. The decoder-based method has advantages both in terms of component numbers and power consumption, but the multiplexer-based method has the advantages of being based on a simple operating principle and ease of implementation.