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Diamonds Used To Increase Density, Performance of Phase-Change Memory
Lucas123 writes "Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have shown they can increase the density, performance and the durability of phase-change memory (PSM) by using diamonds to change the base alloy material. Instead of using the more typical method of applying heat to the alloy to change its state from amorphous to crystalline, thereby laying down bits in the material, the researchers used pressure from diamond-tipped tools. Using pressure versus heat allowed them to slow down the change in order to produce many varying states allowing more data to be stored on the alloy. 'This phase-change memory is more stable than the material used in current flash drives. It works 100 times faster and is rewritable millions of times,' said the study's lead author, Ming Xu, a doctoral student at the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. 'Within about five years, it could also be used to replace hard drives in computers and give them more memory.'"
Discounting the fact that simply because the researchers are not named "John" and "Sally" they must not be American... Contemporary American society does not value education in general and have no respect for science, engineering and R&D. Accordingly we are producing less scientists and engineers. We are investing less into long term R&D on both the public and private sector which further depresses the draw of talent into the fields.
So, I would expect this trend to continue until businesses can stop looking at the next quarter and start looking 10-20+ years down the road. The federal government on the other hand needs to realize that funding blue sky research brings us things like the Internet and we could use more of that too...
In closing we are pretty much hosed as long as we value reality tv, athletics and wealth more than discovery, knowledge and the common good.
Good luck!
- anon
The U.S. population is about 13% foreign-born, which is pretty high. Lower than Canada (19%), but higher than most other countries. For example, only 9% of the UK population is foreign-born, 4% of the Italian population, 2% of the Japanese population, and... 0.3% of the Chinese population.
It's not necessarily actually easy to get into the U.S., but overall, a lot of people do so anyway. And unlike many other countries, the U.S. has automatic citizenship from birth, which means any offspring of the foreign-born population (a full 1/8 of the country!) are automatically citizens, which is a much friendlier path to citizenship than most countries have.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is a fairly standard alloy for PC memory. These are common in next gen memory--look up ovonyx, or current Samsung NOR for a similar technology. And to be fair, most people in the memory industry do think that some sort of FeRAM or ReRAM or PCRAM will be important in 5 years, as a different leg in the memory heirarchy.
In any case, the point of this research was to use diamonds to take a look at the pressure/temperature phase diagram of the alloy. There is no intent or interest in making the material with diamond. Instead, knowing that you can get performance by going to another phase (which isn't simply accessable with tuning temperatures), you can
1) Change out the layer you are growing on
2) Add a stressor layer (Si3N4 is common) and temperature cycle.
3) Do some sort of tricky flash anneal to recrystalize
4) Add a quaternary alloy to improve the phase space.
In short, there will never be diamond involved, unless there is a C stress layer (unlikely).
This is all pretty standard stuff. THe diamond portion is a side note--that is how they applied test pressures. Practical devices may come out of this based on alterations of other sorts