Molecular Clusters That Can Retain Charge Could Revolutionize Computer Memory

jfruh writes:Computing devices have been gobbling up more and more memory, but storage tech has been hitting its limits, creating a bottleneck. Now researchers in Spain and Scotland have reported a breakthrough in working with metal-oxide clusters that can retain their charge. These molecules could serve as the basis for RAM and flash memory that will be leagues smaller than existing components (abstract).

Comments

Re:Will this go the same way as the spintronics?

[Ken_g6]

Spintronics is a quantum thing - a way of specifying more information in each electron. As such, it's very difficult to work with.

This is more similar to carbon nanotubes. They're a new thing, which could be very useful, if only you could cheaply and efficiently manufacture them and put them in the proper places on a chip. However:

"One major benefit of the POMs we've created is that it's possible to fabricate them with devices which are already widely used in industry, so they can be adopted as new forms of flash memory without requiring production lines to be expensively overhauled," Lee Cronin, a chemist involved in the research, said in a University of Glasgow release.

So using these may be more realistic than carbon nanotubes!

Paywalls pain me

[dixonpete]

I understand that science journals have their place but I ain't paying no $32 to read an article. Why don't the authors submit a decently detailed popular version as a press release once their article gets accepted for the rest of us?