Rebooting to go the way of the dodo
Boffins
supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) nanoscale interdisciplinary
research team award and three Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers
at Cornell University, Penn State University and Northwestern University have
worked out a way of adding ferroelectric capability to material used in common
computer transistors.
Ferroelectric materials provide low-power,
high-efficiency electronic memory and smart cards use the technology to
instantly reveal and update stored information when waved before a reader. A
computer with this capability could instantly provide information and other data
to the user. Top boffin Darrell Schlom took strontium titanate, a normally
non-ferroelectric variant of the ferroelectric material used in smart cards, and
deposited it on silicon in such a way that the silicon squeezed it into a
ferroelectric state.
The result could pave the way for a next-generation of
memory devices that are lower power, higher speed and more convenient to use.
For everyday computer users, it could mean no more waiting for the operating
system to come online or to access memory slowly from the hard drive.
More
research is needed to achieve a ferroelectric transistor that would make
"instant on" computing a reality, but having the materials in direct contact,
free of intervening reaction layers, is an important step.