An Efficient Gate Library for Ambipolar CNTFET Logic

Recently, several emerging technologies have been reported as potential candidates for controllable ambipolar devices. Controllable ambipolarity is a desirable property that enables the on-line configurability of n-type and p-type device polarity. In this paper, we introduce a new design methodology for logic gates based on controllable ambipolar devices, with an emphasis on carbon nanotubes as the candidate technology. Our technique results in ambipolar gates with a higher expressive power than conventional complementary metal-oxidesemiconductor (CMOS) libraries. We propose a library of static ambipolar carbon nanotube field effect transistor (CNTFET) gates based on generalized NOR-NAND-AOI-OAI primitives, which efficiently implements XOR-based functions. Technology mapping of several multi-level logic benchmarks that extensively use the XOR function, including multipliers, adders, and linear circuits, with ambipolar CNTFET logic gates indicates that on average, it is possible to reduce the number of logic levels by 42%, the delay by 26%, and the power consumption by 32%, resulting in a energy-delay-product (EDP) reduction of 59% over the same circuits mapped with unipolar CNTFET logic gates. Based on the projections in [1], where it is stated that defectfree CNTFETs will provide a 5× performance improvement over metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors, the ambipolar library provides a performance improvement of 7×, a 57% reduction in power consumption, and a 20× improvement in EDP over the CMOS library.