Microelectronic Engineering 67–68 (2003) 755–762 www.elsevier.com / locate / mee Silicon single-electron parametron cell for solid-state quantum information processing a, a a b * E.G. Emiroglu , Z.A.K. Durrani , D.G. Hasko , D.A. Williams a Microelectronics Research Centre, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB30 HE UK b Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, Hitachi Europe, Cavendish Laboratory, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB30 HE, UK Abstract We present the fabrication and preliminary electrical characteristics of a parametron cell, consisting of two conducting islands separated by a very short nanowire, with an integrated capacitively coupled electrometer and gates, fabricated using a trench-isolated structure on silicon-on-insulator material using high-resolution electron beam lithography and reactive-ion-etching. The structure is modified in comparison to previously presented devices, such that both the parametron island sizes and the inter-island separation have been reduced in order that single-electron effects influence the polarisation of the cell. This polarisation is used in order to achieve classical computation by the application of appropriate pulses on the gates.  2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Single-electron; Parametron; Quantum information; q-Bit 1. Introduction Single-electron parametron devices are charge-state systems, which offer wireless information processing and storage with extremely low power dissipation. In what we shall refer to as the Korotkov-proposal [1], the basic parametron cell consists of three conducting islands separated by tunnel barriers. Two outer islands, of equal diameter, are separated by a smaller middle island by tunnel junctions, where the middle island is placed with a slight offset with respect to the line joining the centres of the two outer islands (the x axis or the centre line). It is possible to induce a net charge polarisation on an initially neutral parametron structure through externally applied electric fields (e.g. by using capacitively coupled gate electrodes), which causes electron transfer between the conducting islands through the tunnel barriers that separate them. The asymmetric placement of the middle island *Corresponding author. E-mail address: ege20@cam.ac.uk (E.G. Emiroglu). 0167-9317 / 03 / $ – see front matter  2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016 / S0167-9317(03)00190-4