WORLD
New Technology Would Dramatically Extend Battery Life for Mobile Devices
Baku, March 14 (AZERTAC). Technophiles who have been dreaming of mobile devices that run longer on lighter, slimmer batteries may soon find their wish has been granted.
University of Illinois engineers have developed a form of ultra-low-power digital memory that is faster and uses 100 times less energy than similar available memory. The technology could give future portable devices much longer battery life between charges.
The flash memory used in mobile devices today stores bits as charge, which requires high programming voltages and is relatively slow. Industry has been exploring faster, but higher power phase-change materials (PCM) as an alternative. In PCM memory a bit is stored in the resistance of the material, which is switchable.
Pop`s group lowered the power per bit to 100 times less than existing PCM memory by focusing on one simple, yet key factor: size. Rather than the metal wires standard in industry, the group used carbon nanotubes, tiny tubes only a few nanometers in diameter -- 10,000 times smaller than a human hair. "The energy consumption is essentially scaled with the volume of the memory bit," said graduate student Feng Xiong, the first author of the paper. "By using nanoscale contacts, we are able to achieve much smaller power consumption." To create a bit, the researchers place a small amount of PCM in a nanoscale gap formed in the middle of a carbon nanotube. They can switch the bit "on" and "off" by passing small currents through the nanotube. The team has made and tested a few hundred bits so far, and they want to scale up production to create arrays of memory bits that operate together. They also hope to achieve greater data density through clever programming such that each physical PCM bit can program two data bits, called multibit memory. The team is continuing to work to reduce power consumption and increase energy efficiency even beyond the groundbreaking savings they`ve already demonstrated.