Though smartphones and tablets are hailed as the hardware of the future, their present-day incarnations have some flaws. Most notoriously, low RAM memory limits the number of applications that can be run at one time and quickly consumes battery power. Now, a Tel Aviv University researcher has found a creative solution to these well-known problems.
Working with carbon molecules called C60, a researcher has successfully built a sophisticated memory transistor that can both transfer and store energy, eliminating the need for a capacitor.
This molecular memory transistor, which can be as small as one nanometer, stores and disseminates information at high speed — and it's ready to be produced at existing high-tech fabrication facilities.
Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are the computing devices of the post-personal-computer (PC) era, says the researcher. These devices, which are small and battery operated, are quickly closing the gap with their laptop or desktop ancestors in terms of computing power and storage capacity — but they are lacking in RAM, the run-time memory reserves that computers need to operate various programs. Because current RAM technology is power-hungry and physically large, it doesn't function well in mobile devices. That's where laptops and PC's retain the edge.
As many as 15 years ago, technology experts realized that the problem with shrinking electronics would be the physical size of the hardware needed to make them run. The idea of a sophisticated transistor, which could do the job of both the transistor and the capacitor, was a technological dream — until now.
In order to tackle this technology gap, the researcher was inspired by the work of Israel Prize winner Prof. Avraham Nitzan, who proved that, due to its special structure, a molecule can store both an electric charge and information at the same time. To apply this finding to transistors, the researcher used C60 molecules, made up of 60 carbon atoms, and put them in the channels of a transistor, creating a smaller-than-silicone, high-speed transistor that could also do the job of a capacitor.
2012 was the first year in which big technology companies sold more tablets and smartphones than laptops and notebooks combined. The next step is to find a fabrication facility with the necessary materials to manufacture the transistors.
This story is reprinted from material from Tel Aviv University, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.