title: Defect tolerance in resistor-logic demultiplexers for nanoelectronics.
abstract: Since defect rates are expected to be high in nanocircuitry, we analyse the performance of resistor-based demultiplexers in the presence of defects. The defects observed to occur in fabricated nanoscale crossbars are stuck-open, stuck-closed, stuck-short, broken-wire, and adjacent-wire-short defects. We analyse the distribution of voltages on the nanowire output lines of a resistor-logic demultiplexer, based on an arbitrary constant-weight code, when defects occur. These analyses show that resistor-logic demultiplexers can tolerate small numbers of stuck-closed, stuck-open, and broken-wire defects on individual nanowires, at the cost of some degradation in the circuit's worst-case voltage margin. For stuck-short and adjacent-wire-short defects, and for nanowires with too many defects of the other types, the demultiplexer can still achieve error-free performance, but with a smaller set of output lines. This design thus has two layers of defect tolerance: the coding layer improves the yield of usable output lines, and an avoidance layer guarantees that error-free performance is achieved.
authors: Quantum Science Research, Hewlett Packard Labs, 1501 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA.
authors: Philip J
authors: PJ
authors: Kuekes
authors: Warren
authors: W
authors: Robinett
authors: R Stanley
authors: RS
authors: Williams