Novel Nanowires for Faster Memory

September 27, 2007 | Source: Technology Review

University of Pennsylvania researchers have pioneered a new technique for producing phase-change nanowires.

The technique could make it possible to build memory devices thousands of times faster and eight to ten times more energy efficient than memory currently on the market, such as flash.

The plan is to jolt the wires into an amorphous phase (the equivalent of a one in computer logic) or back into a crystalline state (the equivalent of a zero) with an electric pulse to store data.