Implementation of simple logic gates on gold–ammonia bonding patterns in different charge states

Abstract

An approach is proposed for encoding the gold–ammonia bonding patterns on the conformational manifold of the –(NH₃)_m, Z = 0, ±1, clusters in order to implement simple unary and binary logic gate operations. The gold–ammonia bonding patterns are governed by two different basic ingredients: the anchoring Au–N bond and the nonconventional N–H···Au hydrogen bond, and exhibit distinct characteristics as the charge of the cluster varies within Z = 0, ±1. The conformers of the small cluster, Au^Z–(NH₃)₂, and of the nanometric size one, , are chosen as illustrative examples. The dependence of the bonding patterns on the overall charge state of the cluster allows to implement the logic gates NOT, FAN–OUT, AND, NAND, OR, NOR, INH, XOR, and XNOR and to identify the outputs using an IR readout protocol.

¹Dedicated to Raphael D. Levine on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by the EC FET–OPEN STREP Project MOLDYNLOGIC and by FRFC.2465.06 (Belgium). We thank the reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions.

Notes

¹Dedicated to Raphael D. Levine on the occasion of his 70th birthday.