• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.43 no.4 s.346
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• pp.56-65
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• 2006

The Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA) can be considered as a candidate for the next generation digital logic implementation technology due to their small feature sizes and ultra low power consumption. Up to now, several designs using Uh technology have been proposed. However, we found not all of the designs function properly. Furthermore, no general design guidelines have been proposed so far. A straightforward extension of a simple functional design pattern may fail. This makes designing a large scale circuits using QCA technology an extremely time-consuming process. In this paper, we show several critical vulnerabilities related to unbalanced input paths to QCA gates and sneak noise paths in QCA interconnect structures. In order to make up the vulnerabilities, a disciplinary guideline will be proposed. Also, we present a fast adder which has been designed by the discipline, and verified to be functional by the simulation.