Computer memory capable of operating at 600 degrees Celsius

A technological advance suggests that in the near future it will be possible to use computer memories, without having to cool them, in machinery components for blast furnaces, combustion engines, nuclear reactors and geothermal wells, and even on the surface of torrid planets like Venus. .

Unlike conventional silicon-based memories, a new device can store and rewrite information at temperatures of up to 600 degrees Celsius, hotter than the surface of Venus and the temperature at which lead melts.

The achievement is the work of a team including, among others, Jingxian Li, from the University of Michigan in the American city of Ann Arbor, and Alec Talin, from the American National Laboratories in Sandia.

When heated above about 150 degrees Celsius, conventional silicon-based semiconductors begin to conduct uncontrollable levels of current. Since electronic components are precisely manufactured for certain current levels, high temperatures can erase information from a device’s memory.

That problem does not occur with new technology. The key is that the device is based on a material that carries negatively charged oxygen ions instead of electrons.

Those ions move between two layers of memory (the semiconductor tantalum oxide and the metallic tantalum) through a solid electrolyte that acts as a barrier by preventing other charges from moving between the layers.

The oxygen ions are guided by a series of three platinum electrodes that control whether the oxygen enters or leaves the tantalum oxide.

The entire process is similar to charging and discharging a battery, but instead of storing energy, this electrochemical process is used to store information.

Memory devices made using tantalum oxide on this chip can store data for both conventional memories and 600 degree Celsius memories. (Photo: Brenda Ahearn, Michigan Engineering)

However, there is a disadvantage if this class of memory device must sometimes operate in not so high temperatures: new information can only be written to the device above 250 degrees Celsius. Still, the researchers suggest that the problem could be solved by simply adding a heating system to the device.

Li, Talin and their colleagues present the technical details of the new technology in the academic journal Device, under the title “Nonvolatile electrochemical memory at 600 ºC enabled by composition phase separation.” (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)