Here Comes The Buckytube

from the carbon-memories dept

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's been a dream for many years to build "non-volatile" memories which would allow our computers to start in a second. Some companies, like IBM, have taken the magnetic RAM route, while others are experimenting with exotic materials. In this article, The Economist says there is a new contender: carbon. And it describes a new technology from Nantero named NRAM -- the N standing for nanotechnology. "Nantero's memory chips consist of billions of nanotubes [or "buckytubes" after Richard Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes have a framework similar to the arrangement of the atoms in a nanotube], each a few hundred nanometres long, suspended from a silicon wafer. Another wafer sits about 100 nanometres below the first. Because the nanotubes that Nantero uses conduct electricity, a small electric charge at one point on the second wafer will draw several dozen nanotubes towards it. Once they are there, they stay there." This new kind of memory promises to be very fast and very dense. Products should be available next year. Check my blog for more comments and references."

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