Scientists Discover New Atomic Technique to Charge Memory Chips

March 22, 2013 02:48 PM EST By: Jennifer Rocha

New technique could pave the way for a new class of non-volatile memory and logic chips that would use less power than today’s silicon based devices

Story content courtesy of IBM, US

Rather than using conventional electrical means that operate today’s semiconducting devices, IBM’s scientists discovered a new way to operate chips using tiny ionic currents, which are streams of charged atoms that could mimic the event-driven way in which the human brain operates.

BM research scientists showed that it is possible to reversibly transform metal oxides between insulating and conductive states by the insertion and removal of oxygen ions driven by electric fields at oxide-liquid interfaces. Once the oxide materials, which are innately insulating, are transformed into a conducting state, the IBM experiments showed that the materials maintain a stable metallic state even when power to the device is removed.  This non-volatile property means that chips using devices that operate using this novel phenomenon could be used to store and transport data in a more efficient, event-driven manner instead of requiring the state of the devices to be maintained by constant electrical currents.

To achieve this breakthrough, IBM researchers applied a positively charged ionic liquid electrolyte to an insulating oxide material - vanadium dioxide - and successfully converted the material to a metallic state.

 

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