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Reliable 3-D memories from silicon oxide and graphene: Visionary transparent memory a step closer to reality
The technique based on the switching properties of silicon oxide, a breakthrough discovery by Rice in 2008, was reported today in the online journal Nature Communications. The Rice team led by chemist James Tour and physicist Douglas Natelson is making highly transparent, nonvolatile resistive memory devices based on the revelation that silicon oxide itself can be a switch.
A voltage run across a thin sheet of silicon oxide strips oxygen atoms away from a channel 5 nanometers wide, turning it into conductive metallic silicon. With lower voltages, the channel can then be broken and repaired repeatedly, over thousands of cycles. That channel can be read as a "1" or a "0," which is a switch, the basic unit of computer memories. At 5 nm, it shows promise to extend Moore's Law, which predicted computer circuitry will double in power every two years. Current state-of-the-art electronics are made with 22 nm circuits.
The research by Tour, Rice's T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science; lead author Jun Yao, a former graduate student at Rice and now a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard; Jian Lin, a Rice postdoctoral researcher, and their colleagues details memories that are 95 percent transparent, made of silicon oxide and crossbar graphene terminals on flexible plastic.
This is a flexible, transparent memory chip created by researchers at Rice University. Credit: Tour Lab, Rice University
The Rice lab is making its devices with a working yield of about 80 percent, "which is pretty good for a non-industrial lab," Tour said. "When you get these ideas into industries' hands, they really sharpen it up from there."
Manufacturers who have been able to fit millions of bits on small devices like flash memories now find themselves bumping against the physical limits of their current architectures, which require three terminals for each bit. But the Rice unit, requiring only two terminals, makes it far less complicated. It means arrays of two-terminal memories can be stacked in three-dimensional configurations, vastly increasing the amount of information a memory chip might hold. Tour said his lab has also seen promise for making multi-state memories that would further increase their capacity. Yao's discovery followed work at Rice on graphitic-based memories in which researchers saw strips of graphite on a silicon oxide substrate break and heal when voltage was applied. Yao suspected the underlying silicon oxide was actually responsible, and he struggled to convince his lab colleagues. "Jun quietly continued his work and stacked up evidence, eventually building a working device with no graphite," Tour said. "And still, others said, 'Oh, it was exogenous carbon in the system that did it!' Then he built it with no exposure to carbon on the chip." Yao's paper detailing the silicon oxide mechanism appeared in Nature's Scientific Reports in January. His revelation became the basis for the next-generation memories being designed in Tour's lab, where the team is building memories out of silicon oxides sandwiched between graphene – one-atom-thick ribbons of carbon – and attached to plastic sheets. There's not a speck of metal in the entire unit (with the exception of leads attached to the graphene electrodes). The marriage of silicon and graphene would extend the long-recognized utility of the first and prove once and for all the value of the second, long touted as a wonder material looking for a reason to be, Tour said. He noted the devices not only show potential for radiation-hardened devices – several built at Rice are now being evaluated at the International Space Station – but also withstand heat up to about 700 degrees Celsius. That means they can be mounted directly atop integrated processors with no ill effects. The lab is also building crossbar memories with embedded diodes to better manipulate control voltages, Tour said. "We've been developing this slowly to understand the fundamental switching mechanisms," he said. "Industries have flown in and looked at it, but we're doing basic science here; we don't package things nice and pretty, so what they see looks rudimentary. "But this is now transitioning into an applied system that could well be taken up as a future memory system," he said. More information: Highly transparent nonvolatile resistive memory devices from silicon oxide and graphene, www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n10/full/ncomms2110.html
Source: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-reliable-d-memories-silicon-oxide.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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