The Hindu News Update Service
News Update Service
Sunday, April 19, 2009 : 0940 Hrs
Sci. & Tech.
Washington (IANS): Ultra-thin ferro-electric materials used in smart cards will
soon make computers more efficient by enabling them to switch on instantly.
Smart cards rely on ferro-electric materials to instantly reveal and update
stored information. For example, in ATMs. A computer with this capability could
instantly provide information and other data to the user.
Researchers led by Darrell Schlom at Cornell University took strontium titanate
and deposited it on silicon, the main component of most semiconductors.
Schlom and his team then integrated circuits in such a way that the silicon
squeezed it into a ferro-electric state.
For computer users, it could mean no more waiting for the operating system to
come online or to access memory slowly from the hard drive.
"Several hybrid transistors have been proposed specifically with ferroelectrics
in mind," said Schlom. "By creating a ferroelectric directly on silicon,
we are bringing this possibility closer to realization."
More research is needed to achieve a ferroelectric transistor that would make
"instant on" computing a reality. An important step, however, is to have the
materials in direct contact, free of intervening reaction layers said a Cornell
release.
These findings were published in Science.
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