Skip to Content

Breakthrough Could Yield Instant-On Computers

Ferroelectric materials, already common in RFID chips, are wedded to silicon for the first time.
November 11, 2011

As the Google Chromebook, MacBook Air and a host of other laptops that incorporate solid state drives amply demonstrated, replacing hard drives with the same kind of flash memory present in thumb drives and memory cards can radically reduce the time it takes a computer to boot up. Now researchers at a trio of NSF-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers have demonstrated the tantalizing possibility of an even faster kind of solid-state memory.

The arrangement between atoms of a film of strontium titanate and single crystal of silicon on which it was made. Credit: D. Schlom

Ferroelectric materials can already be found in everything with an RFID chip—which includes the kind of smart cards common in Europe, more advanced subway card systems like those in D.C. and Boston, and those easy pay key fobs you can use at the gas station. In these applications they work well, but they had yet to be incorporated into honest-to-goodness silicon computer chips until the most recent discovery.

I’m not sure I can put it any better than Research.gov, on account of I don’t completely understand what was accomplished:

Researchers led by Cornell University materials scientist Darrell Schlom deposited strontium titanate onto silicon. Strontium titanate is a normally non-ferroelectric variant of the ferroelectric material used in smart cards. Silicon is the principal component of most semiconductors and integrated circuits. Schlom’s method forced the silicon to squeeze the strontium titanate into a ferroelectric state.

The takeaway: ferroelectric materials are already making their way into things like ferroelectric ram, which is faster than conventional Flash memory but, at this point, not nearly as information dense. If ferroelectric ram is any guide to the performance of this new kind of ferroelectric material, we could someday see solid state memory that’s even faster than Flash.

In other words: going from the Chromebook’s legendary 7-second boot time to something approaching “instant on.”

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Geoffrey Hinton tells us why he’s now scared of the tech he helped build

“I have suddenly switched my views on whether these things are going to be more intelligent than us.”

ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it

The narrative around cheating students doesn’t tell the whole story. Meet the teachers who think generative AI could actually make learning better.

Meet the people who use Notion to plan their whole lives

The workplace tool’s appeal extends far beyond organizing work projects. Many users find it’s just as useful for managing their free time.

Learning to code isn’t enough

Historically, learn-to-code efforts have provided opportunities for the few, but new efforts are aiming to be inclusive.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.