Researchers at the RMIT University in Australia have developed a nanoscale storage device by mimicking the human brain, offering a new stage on which reliable and highly stable memory devices can be developed on a nanoscale.
Featured on the cover of Advanced Functional Materials, a prestigious journal for materials science, RMIT researchers yielded a stacked structure about a nanometer thin. The structure was able to achieve its small size because it was manufactured using a material made from functional oxide, which is over 10,000 times thinner than a strand of hair.
"The thin film is specifically designed to have defects in its chemistry to demonstrate a 'memristive' effect -- where the memory element's behavior is dependent on its past experiences," explained Dr. Sharath Sririam, leader of the project and also co-leader of the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group at RMIT.
Flash memory was being scaled rapidly and soon limits were met, so it was necessary to come up with novel ideas for architectures and materials that would pave the way for non-volatile memory.
The structure the researchers were able to create has an array of possible applications in electronics, from architectures for computer logic that can reproduce the response time and versatility of biological neural networks to ultra-fast memory devices that can trimmed down to just a few nanometers.
More research is needed but so far the study has yielded progress in finding next-generation technology in memory that can mimic the more complex functions of the human neural network, taking scientists a step closer toward turning a bionic brain into reality.
According to lead author and Ph.D. researcher Hussein Nili, the results of the research as well as the material used for creating the memory device are significant because stable memory effects are being observed from the pathways of the structure. These effects can also be controlled by applying pressure, opening up the possibility that memory elements like actuators and sensors can be used in various applications.
As part of the innovative endeavors carried out by the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group at RMIT, the study is funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council Discovery and supported by the university's Platform Technologies Research Institute. The researchers also have close affiliations with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and MicroNano Research Facility in RMIT.
The creation of the smallest memory device comes after IBM recently unveiled one of the largest CMOS chips in the world. Both the memory device and the chip took inspiration from the human brain's structure.
