PLAs in quantum-dot cellular automata

Research in the fields of physics, chemistry and electronics has demonstrated that quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is a viable alternative for nano-scale computing. However, little work on QCA has studied designing implementation-friendly programmable QCA circuits. This paper fills this gap by presenting a novel QCA-based programmable logic array (PLA) structure. In addition to being compact, the proposed PLA structure exploits some unique properties of QCA cells to achieve ease of implementation, programming and defect detection. These features are indispensable to the successful adoption of any nano-scale circuits