Noise-supported operations of neuromorphic single-electron circuits

An overview is provided of work on novel single-electron circuits whose architectures were inspired by nature or by biological nervous systems. Generally, these single-electron circuits provide various useful information-processing systems. However, they must be placed under a low temperature environment to control or attenuate thermal noise. Noise is inevitable under a natural environment and has a bad influence on single-electron devices. However, biological systems definitely exploit noise to increase their performance on neural computation. Some examples of nature-inspired useful single-electron circuits are presented. Device operations of these thermal-noise-exploited single-electron circuits are also discussed. Finally, a candidate of an advanced information-processing single-electron device that can utilize thermal noise is described.