Single-electron circuit for stochastic data processing using nano-MOSFETs

A MOSFET-based circuit utilizing single electrons is demonstrated at room temperature. Individual electrons randomly passing through the nanoscale silicon-on-insulator (SOI) MOSFET are monitored by an electrometer in real time. Such a random behavior of single electrons is used for random-number generation suitable for a data processing which stochastically extracts the optimum solution among various ones. The use of electron transport in MOSFETs provides high controllability of the randomness, which prevents extracted solutions from staying at undesirable local minimum, as well as fast generation of random numbers. The present result promises new single-electron applications using nanoscale MOSFETs.