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Researchers Create Graphite Memory 10 Atoms Thick
CWmike writes "Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate. 'Though we grow it from the vapor phase, this material [graphene] is just like graphite in a pencil. You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper. If you were to place Scotch tape over it and pull up, you can sometimes pull up as small as one sheet of graphene. It is a little under 1 nanometer thick,' Professor James Tour said."
As an optimist myself I would have said that it was 10 atoms thin!
I store data using just a pencil, paper, and some tape. I knew there was a way. Oh wait...
This could be a real boon to space exploration. Temperature extremes and radiation are two of the most common problems that must be dealt with when designing exploratory vehicles. This could simplify things greatly.
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
Budweiser?
You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper.
You know, pencils make pretty good r/w memory, too, although the number of r/w cycles is limited.
no more microwaving your hard drive to aid in data destruction.
The problem with using Graphene for write-only memory is that you need Pink Latexene to delete it. Fortunately they've discovered how to make extremely tiny cylinders of Pink Latexene, mounted on the end of yellow wooden sticks, to do such work. The combination of the graphene on one end of the stick and the pink cylinder on the other promises to allow nearly unlimited read-write capabilities, for mere pennies, distributed easily worldwide.
I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
"...we grow it from the vapor phase..."
Literally, vaporware.
the RIAA et al will be wanting royalties off every pencil sold and Canada will have a pencil tax?
Reading the articles, it appears the size is nice, but it isn't the biggest deal here. They're projecting a bit smaller than 10nm, which is twice as small as next-generation flash drives that "projections show ... will reach its limit of 20nm by around 2012."
The biggest deal here seems to be power management.
What distinguishes graphene from other next-generation memories is the on-off power ratio - the amount of juice a circuit holds when it's on, as opposed to off. "It's huge - a million-to-one," said Tour. "Phase change memory, the other thing the industry is considering, runs at 10-to-1. That means the 'off' state holds, say, one-tenth the amount of electrical current than the 'on' state."
Current tends to leak from an "off" that's holding a charge. "That means in a 10-by-10 grid, 10 'offs' would leak enough to look like they were 'on.' With our method, it would take a million 'offs' in a line to look like 'on,'" he said. "So this is big. It allows us to make a much larger array."
Your math is correct, your chemistry isn't.
A carbon atom has a covalent radius of about 80pm, but the atoms in sheets of graphite aren't bonded together. I don't know how far apart the atoms would rest, but it's going to be much farther than they would bond.
Google tells me that 5 nanometers = 5000 picometers. Is my math off? It seems like there is a factor of 10 between how thick this stuff is and how thick Carbon is.
One is talking about thickness, the other a diameter. The next paragraph of the article it says the sheets are a little under 1nm thick, and 10 C atoms would be around 800pm so that's a little under 1nm. The 5nm diameter would then be the other dimensions, these grown sheets are presumably circular. That dimension is important because that indicates how densely you could pack them on a surface.
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Not that much farther apart, since the article says that the sheets are less than 1nm thick.
The figure he's quoting is a diameter, which would be the 2d dimensions of the sheet on the surface of the silicon they grew it on. It's the 5nm diameter that makes this exciting as a memory technology since that is very dense.
The enemies of Democracy are
Thank you, that makes much more sense. I think I've got it now. Let me try explaining it with a holiday metaphore:
What they have created is, say, like a cookie. Each of these little cookies are 5 nanometeres in diameter. It's important to know that, because it lets us know how many cookies we can fit on our cookie pan. Each of these cookies are about 1nm tall. This is important because it affects how many of these cookie trays we could stack on top of each other in the oven.
I was having a problem conceptualizing exactly what we were talking about until you described it as you did.
Graphene has been studied extensively in the last few years. Carbon Nanotubes were on the rise (which are just rolled up sheets of single layer graphite) but the current difficulties to manipulate those to create devices staggered their advance. Graphene ( or Graphite for that matter) is a little easier to manage because it's like a 2 -D sheet and it can be laid/printed off a substrate more easily.
The current major problem of graphene is the lack of a sizable band-gap which is typically required for semiconductor modulation. We may see a breakthrough in the following years if people figure out a way to overcome this barrier.
There's plenty of room at the bottom! Richard P. Feynmann
When cornered into a room by ninjas with nothing separating you from them but a door of wood, yes, thicker is better, but you will die regardless.
I think you are confusing ninjas with zombies, zombies have thick wood door shredding powers while a ninja is already in the room with you.
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