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Molecular-level flash memory

Editorial Type: News     Date: 11-2014    Views: 1985   




Flash memory, regularly used for electronic data storage in smartphones, cameras and memory sticks, uses metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) components. However, there is a physical limit to the minimum size of the data cells because they are difficult to manufacture at a scale below 10 nanometres: hence the limit on the amount of storage that will fit into conventional silicon chips.

Scientists have previously suggested that using individual molecules to replace conventional data-storage components in flash memory could help create small devices capable of holding large amounts of data, but those trying to design these molecules have faced significant practical barriers, including low thermal stability and high resistance, limiting their use.

A team from the University of Glasgow's Schools of Chemistry and Engineering and Rovira i Virgili University in Spain have developed a possible solution using metal-oxide clusters known as polyoxometalates (POMs). Professor Lee Cronin, Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, who led the research team said, "Conventional flash memory uses transistors whose design allows them to 'remember' whether they have been turned on or off after they've been removed from a power source. Those transistors' positions correspond to binary, allowing data to be stored. We've been able to design, synthesise and characterise POM molecules that can trap charge and act as flash RAM, as well as dope the inner core of the clusters with selenium to create a new type of memory that we call 'write-once-erase'.

The POM clusters provide a balance of structural stability and electronic activity and their electronic functionality is 'tunable', making them suitable as storage nodes for flash memory. One major benefit of the POMs we've created is that it's possible to fabricate them with devices which are already widely-used in industry, so they can be adopted as new forms of flash memory without requiring production lines to be expensively overhauled." The research team's paper, titled 'Design and fabrication of memory devices based on nanoscalepolyoxometalate clusters', is published in Nature.

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