Molecule-based photonically switched half and full adder

A single molecule logic gate using electronically excited states and ionization/fragmentation can take advantage of the differences in cross-sections for one and two photon absorption. Fault tolerant optically pumped half adder and full adder are discussed as applications. A full adder requires two separate additions, and the logic concatenation that is required to implement this is physically achieved by an intramolecular transfer along the side chain of 2-phenylethyl-N,N-dimethylamine (PENNA). Solutions of the kinetic equations for the temporal evolution of the concentration of different states in the presence of time-varying laser fields are used to illustrate the high contrast ratios that are potentially possible for such devices.