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Purdue uses 2D material to make memory ICs

“We haven’t yet explored system fatigue using this new material, but our hope is that it is both faster and more reliable than other approaches due to the unique switching mechanism we’ve observed,” says Purdue professor  Joerg Appenzeller.

A system using molybdenum ditelluride can quickly switch between 0 and 1 to increase the rate of storing and retrieving data. This happens because when electric field is applied to the cell the atoms are displaced by a small distance, resulting in a state of high resistance, noted as 0 or a state of low resistance noted as 1.

This process can occur much faster than the switching that takes place in conventional RRAM devices.

A cross-point RRAM would be formed where each memory cell is located at the intersection of wires.

“Logic and interconnects drain battery too, so the advantage of an entirely two-dimensional architecture is more functionality within a small space and better communication between memory and logic,” says Appenzeller.