A Method to Analyze the Fault Tolerance of Molecular Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata Systems

The quantum-dot cellular automata computing paradigm (QCA) is based on the electrostatic interaction between QCA cells. Therefore, the correct functionality of the QCA systems strongly depends on the geometrical positions of the cells. Given that during the manufacturing process, the positioning cannot be done with 100% accuracy the question rises by how much the system may deviate from its original geometry before it fails? In this paper we propose a methodology for simulating the effect of positioning faults on the molecular QCA behaviour, which is based on both molecular mechanics and quantum mechanics approaches