02.09.08

Scientists of the AMO GmbH fabricated a non-volatile graphene memory which can potentially scaled down to true-nm sizes.

According to IEEE four years after the discovery of graphen by the group of Andre Geim at the University of Manchester scientists of AMO integrated this new material into a non-volatile memory device. The conductivity of graphene can be modified electrochemically in such a way that it changes by more than six orders of magni-tude.
Graphene has been integrated into a transitor-like structure with graphene contacted by source and drain electrodes. Subsequently, a third electrode consisting of SiO2 and a metal serving as gate has been placed between the two.
In an experiment a voltage of -5 Volt has been applied to the gate which electro-chemically modified the graphene and set it to a non-conductive state more than six orders of magnitude below the initial conductivity. Raising the voltage to positive values conductivity recovered to its initial value.

Scientists at AMO fabricated more than ten of such devices. Although the architec-ture is like a transistor they are being refered to as devices since a completely differ-ent switching mechanism is involved.
In a further experiment they switched a device into the off-state and left it in the shelf for two days before switching it back on. This points out that the device can potentially be used as non-volatile memory devices. According to Tim Echtermeyer and Max Lemme, scientists at AMO, it is possible to scale down these devices to mo-lecular sizes. Fabrication of a graphene memory measuring just 1x1 nm2 in size seems feasible.

 

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