Guest_Jim_* Posted August 17, 2015 Posted August 17, 2015 Solid state memory has had a profound effect on the present as it has enabled great speed, efficiency, and mobility in many devices. While traditional hard drives are still very useful, the advantages of SSDs cannot and are not being ignored. Naturally then, ways to improve SSDs are constantly being worked on, and researchers at Rice University have developed a new memory technology that could give Flash memory a run for its money. This new technology is based on tantalum oxide, which is a common insulator. The device itself is a sandwich of platinum, tantalum, nanoporous tantalum oxide, graphene, and more platinum. The platinum parts are the two electrodes for the device, with the graphene separating them from the rest, preventing it from migrating into the tantalum. The tantalum and tantalum oxide layers are what store the information. An electrical current causes the oxygen ions and vacancies to move, changing the position of the barrier between them. Fortuitously the flow of oxygen ions actually acts as a barrier from crosstalk between the bits, which allows the device to achieve much higher densities than other tantalum oxide memories. What the researchers have created could store 20 GB to a crossbar array, if suitably dense crossbar devices can be made. It also requires one hundred times less energy than current devices, uses only two electrodes, unlike Flash memory that requires three, and can be made at room temperature, so the dense crossbar array is only major hurdle left to commercialization. Source: Rice University Back to original news post Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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