Graphene has been selected by an international research team, led by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers, to help increase storage density and speed of electronic memory devices.

Graphene was used to read and write the electric dipole moments of an underlying ferroelectric material. A spin-transfer-torque device relies on storing and accessing information in a magnetic dipole moment, similar to a hard drive. Information can be stored in a ferroelectric material in the form of an electric dipole moment in a class of devices known as “ferroelectric-field-effect-transistors” (FFETs).

The new graphene-FFET has both high fidelity and a low operating voltage, helping to surmount power consumption and unwanted heat generation problems in memory devices, the researchers said.

Ref.: Emil B. Song, et al., Robust bi-stable memory operation in single-layer graphene ferroelectric memory, Applied Physics Letters, 2011; [DOI:10.1063/1.3619816]