Molecular logic gate

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A molecular logic gate is a molecule that performs a logical operation based on at least one physical or chemical inputs and a single output. The field has advanced from simple logic systems based on a single chemical or physical input to molecules capable of combinatorial and sequential operations such as arithmetic operations (i.e. moleculators and memory storage algorithms).^[1] Molecular logic gates work with input signals based on chemical processes and with output signals based on spectroscopic phenomena.

Logic gates are the fundamental building blocks of computers, microcontrollers and other electrical circuits that require one or more logical operations. They can be used to construct digital architectures with varying degrees of complexity by a cascade of a few to several million logic gates, and are essentially physical devices that produce a singular binary output after performing logical operations based on Boolean functions on one or more binary inputs. The concept of molecular logic gates, extending the applicability of logic gates to molecules, aims to convert chemical systems into computational units.^[2][3] The field has evolved to realize several practical applications in fields such as molecular electronics, biosensing, DNA computing, nanorobotics, and cell imaging.