11-09 :: September 2011


nanotimes News in Brief


Memory // FeTRAM – A New Type of Computer Memory


© Text: Emil Venere / Purdue R


esearchers at Purdue‘s Birck Nanotechnology Center (USA) are developing a new type of com-


puter memory that could be faster than the existing commercial memory and use far less power than flash memory devices. The technology combines silicon nanowires with a “ferroelectric” polymer, a material that switches polarity when electric fields are applied, making possible a new type of ferroelec- tric transistor. The ferroelectric transistor‘s changing polarity is read as 0 or 1, an operation needed for digital circuits to store information in binary code consisting of sequences of ones and zeroes. The new technology is called FeTRAM, for ferroelectric transi- stor random access memory.


“It‘s in a very nascent stage,” said doctoral student Saptarshi Das, who is working with Joerg Appen- zeller, a professor of electrical and computer engi- neering and scientific director of nanoelectronics at Purdue‘s Birck Nanotechnology Center. “We‘ve developed the theory and done the experiment and also showed how it works in a circuit,” Saptarshi Das said.


Saptarshi Das and Joerg Appenzeller: FETRAM. An Organic Ferroelectric Material Based Novel Random Access Memory Cell, In: NANO Letters, Vol. 11(2011), Issue 9, September 14, 2011, Pages 4003-4007, DOI:10.1021/nl2023993: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl2023993


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This diagram shows the layout for a new type of computer memory that could be faster than the existing commercial memory and use far less po- wer than flash memory devices. The technology, called FeTRAM, combines silicon nanowires with a “ferroelectric” polymer, a material that switches polarity when electric fields are applied, making possible a new type of ferroelectric transistor. © Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University


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