Multiferroids will create a new generation of memory chips

Reducing energy consumption is a very important issue in the development of computer technology. If you reduce the level of electricity consumption by the most important components of the computer, you can reduce its size, reduce heat and increase efficiency. That's why researchers are racking their brains over how to create new memory chips that consume significantly less resources than existing ones.

All kinds of computer memory that exist on the market today use electric charges in order to store information. DRAM-memory chips, which we all use every day, store a charge in capacitors. Depending on whether the capacitor is charged or not, means a bit value of 0 or 1.

The value of the bit can change at lightning speed, but this technology has its drawbacks. They can be safely attributed complete loss of data when the memory chip is cut off from the power source. SSD drives partially solve this problem, but even on them the information is not completely safe, and there is a real risk of its disappearance if the disk is disconnected from power for a long time.

Among other things, modern memory chips require a lot of energy for their work, and also produce a lot of heat. That's why scientists are trying to find a way to avoid the need for a permanent connection to the power source, but at the same time to keep the speed of DRAM technology.

Researchers at Cornell University made a discovery that could lead to the emergence of a new generation of computer memory chips. Professors John Chiron, Darrel Schlom, and Dan Ralph found that the data can be stored in a memory created from bismuth ferrite, and this memory does not need a permanent power supply.

Bismuth ferrite is a chemical compound with multiferroic properties, when two or more types of ferro-ordering coexist simultaneously in one material. In other words, the material has its own permanent magnetic field, which is always electrically polarized. When an electric charge is applied to a material, it changes the polarization, and when the polarization is changed, it remains in this position forever, until the material is again affected by electricity. This very polarization can be used to store valuable data bits.

The discovery of scientists allows to avoid unnecessary energy costs, since now the electric current is needed only to change the polarization, and not to keep the information permanently. Before that, there were similar developments, but they had to work at extremely low temperatures. Memory based on ferrite of bismuth can function at ordinary room temperature without any problems.

While scientists have created a test sample that stores only one bit of information, while the standard DRAM chip contains millions of capacitors and transistors. Scientists are still a lot of work, but, perhaps, they were the beginning of a completely new era in the field of computer technology.

The potential of this discovery is really very large. But since the research is at a very early stage, it will take at least ten years before we can see the first chips created on the basis of this technology on the shelves of stores.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/technology/multiferroidnye-materialy-pozvolyat-sozdat-novoe-pokolenie-chipov-pamyati.html.