Along with curbing the energy consumption of any microelectronics that incorporate it, the team’s design could reduce the number of transistors needed to store certain data by as much as 75 per cent leading to smaller devices.
It could also lend those microelectronics “steel-trap memory” that remembers exactly where its users leave off, even after being shut down or abruptly losing power
Many millions of transistors line the surface of every modern integrated circuit, or microchip. By regulating the flow of electric current within a microchip, the tiny transistor effectively acts as a nanoscopic on-off switch that’s essential to writing, reading and storing data as the 1s and 0s of digital technology.
But silicon-based microchips are nearing their practical limits, and the semiconductor industry has been investigating new technologies to help chips progress further.
“The traditional integrated circuit is facing some serious problems,” said researcher...