Blood-Cell-Sized Memory Circuit Created
Researchers have created an ultradense memory device the size of a white blood cell that has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have space left over. The accomplishment represents an important step toward the creation of molecular computers that are much smaller and could be more powerful than today’s silicon-based computers.
“It’s the sort of device that Intel would contemplate making in the year 2020,” said James R. Heath, the Elizabeth W. Gilloon Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and co-author of a paper on the research. “But at the moment it furthers our goal of learning how to manufacture functional electronic circuitry at molecular dimensions.”
The 2020 date assumes the validity of Moore’s law, which states that the complexity of an integrated circuit will typically double every year. Current memory cell size is .0408 square µm, so Moore’s law assumes that the electronics industry will achieve a device density comparable to the Heath team’s memory circuit in about 13 years. Manufacturers currently see no way to extend the miniaturization beyond the year 2013, according to reports.
Heath’s group manufactured the memory circuit in a cleanroom facility in their labs at Caltech, and the molecular switches were prepared by J. Fraser Stoddart, the University of California, Los Angeles’ Fred Kavli Chair in Nanosystems Sciences, and his group. Stoddart and Heath are pioneers in molecular electronics—using nanoscale molecules as key components in computers and other electronic devices.
“Using molecular components for memory or computation or to replace other electronic components holds tremendous promise,” said Stoddart, who also directs the California NanoSystems Institute.