Scientists improve memory of electronic chips by stacking cells

WASHINGTON - An elegant method for significantly improving the memory capacity of electronic chips has been developed by scientists at Arizona State University.

Lead author Michael Kozicki, an ASU electrical engineering professor and director of the Center for Applied Nanoionics, and his colleagues have shown that they can build stackable memory based on “ionic memory technology,” which could make them ideal candidates for storage cells in high-density memory.

Best of all, the new method uses well-known electronics materials.

“This opens the door to inexpensive, high-density data storage by ’stacking’ memory layers on top one another inside a single chip,” Kozicki said.

“This could lead to hard drive data storage capacity on a chip, which enables portable systems that are smaller, more rugged and able to go longer between battery charges.

“This is a significant improvement on the technology we developed two years ago where we made a new type of memory that could replace Flash, using materials common to the semiconductor industry (copper-doped silicon dioxide). What we have done now is add some critical functionality to the memory cell merely by involving another common material - silicon,” Kozicki added.

Kozicki, worked with Sarath C. Puthen Thermadam, an ASU electrical engineering graduate student, outlined the new memory device in a technical presentation he made in November at the 2009 International Electron Devices and Materials Symposia in Taiwan. (ANI)