With the technology scaling down, leakage power becomes an important part of total power consumption. The relatively large leakage current weakens the energy recovery capability of adiabatic circuits and reduces its superiority, compared with static CMOS circuits in the field of low-power design. In this paper, we rebuild three types of adiabatic circuits (2N2N2P, IPAL and DCPAL) based on FinFET devices to obtain a large leakage power reduction by rationally utilizing the different operating modes of FinFET devices (SG, LP, and IG). A 16-bit adiabatic adder has been investigated to demonstrate the advantages of FinFET adiabatic circuits. The Predictive Technology Model (PTM) is used for 32-nm bulk MOSFET and FinFET devices and all of the simulations are based on HSPICE. The results evince the proposed FinFET adiabatic circuits have a considerable reduction (more than 60% for SG mode FinFET and more than 80% for LP mode FinFET) of power consumption compared with the bulk MOSFET ones. Furthermore, the FinFET adiabatic circuits also have higher limiting frequency of clock source and better noise immunity.

We proposed Reversible Energy Recovery Logic (RERL) using an 8-phase clocking scheme, which is a dual-rail reversible adiabatic logic for ultra-low-energy applications. Because we eliminated non-adiabatic energy loss in RERL by using the concept of reversible logic, RERL has only adiabatic and leakage losses. In this paper we explain its operation and logic design and present its simulation and experimental results. We also present an energy-efficient 8-phase, clocked power generator that uses an off-chip inductor. With simulation results for the full adder, we confirmed that the RERL circuit consumed substantially less energy than other logic circuits at low-speed operation. We evaluated a test chip implemented with a 0.6-µm CMOS technology, which integrated a chain of inverters with a clocked power generator. In the experimental results, the RERL circuit consumed only 4.5% of the dissipated energy of a static CMOS circuit at an optimal operating speed of 40 kHz. In conclusion, RERL is suitable for the applications that do not require high performance but low-energy consumption because its energy consumption can be decreased to the minimum by reducing the operating frequency until adiabatic and leakage losses are equal.