Despite the advantages of ternary logic, it has suffered from excessive transistor count and limited noise margin.This work proposes an ultra-efficient nonvolatile ternary flip-flop (FF) based on negative capacitance carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (NC-CNTFETs).By harnessing the negative differential resistance effect in NC-CNTFETs, the proposed design is similar to a conventional volatile binary FF regarding the number of transistors and control signals.During a scheduled power gating or a sudden power outage, the proposed ternary FF benefits from an auto-backup/auto-restore capability without employing any additional transistors, nonvolatile devices, or control signals.
This leads to zero device overhead, Baby Activity Toy which is a breakthrough in designing nonvolatile memory circuits.On the other hand, the back-to-back slave latch’s hysteretic behavior provides an extraordinary static noise margin that transcends the noise margin of both conventional ternary and binary latches.The simulation Dresser w/ Fireplace results indicate that eliminating additional backup and restore circuitries provides 43% improvements in transistor count, 59% improvements in power saving and 98% improvements in energy-saving than state-of-the-art binary and ternary FFs.Moreover, the proposed design presents a 1.
5 times higher static noise margin than the conventional binary and ternary FFs.Our proposed approach opens new doors in realizing ultra-efficient nonvolatile ternary circuits and systems in neuromorphic applications using ferroelectric-based transistors.