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Researchers Create Graphite Memory 10 Atoms Thick
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Dec 18, 2008 06:54 PM
from the comes-with-convenient-pink-rectangular-prism dept.
from the comes-with-convenient-pink-rectangular-prism dept.
CWmike writes "Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate. 'Though we grow it from the vapor phase, this material [graphene] is just like graphite in a pencil. You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper. If you were to place Scotch tape over it and pull up, you can sometimes pull up as small as one sheet of graphene. It is a little under 1 nanometer thick,' Professor James Tour said."
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Pessimists? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pessimists? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Pessimists? (Score:5, Funny)
When cornered into a room by ninjas with nothing separating you from them but a door of wood, yes, thicker is better, but you will die regardless.
Parent
Re:Ninjas? (Score:5, Funny)
When cornered into a room by ninjas with nothing separating you from them but a door of wood, yes, thicker is better, but you will die regardless.
I think you are confusing ninjas with zombies, zombies have thick wood door shredding powers while a ninja is already in the room with you.
Parent
Re:Pessimists? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not sure thicker is better. I remember hearing that churches in northern England replaced their super-thick oak doors with thinner planks riveted together in a cross-ply design, as this provided better protection against the axes of marauding Vikings.
Of course, Ninjas are a different proposition, and five minutes googling gives me no citation for the monastic plywood theory, so perhaps direct experiment is the only way to settle this one - just make sure you have plenty of emergency Pirates on hand for back-up and it should be safe enough.
Parent
Finally.. (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What's the tape for?
Re:Finally.. (Score:5, Funny)
Compression.
You fold the paper in half, and then tape the ends. Voila! Same information, half the size!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Finally.. (Score:5, Informative)
you should watch some mythbusters!
i think they managed 12 or 13 folds.
of course they started with a sheet of paper the size of a house and made the last fold with the help of heavy machinery!
eric
Parent
Re:Finally.. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
- But, but...
- ONCE AND FOR ALL!
(Also, about 37 foldings of it would make the paper so high to reach the moon).
Re:Finally.. (Score:4, Funny)
(Also, about 37 foldings of it would make the paper so high to reach the moon).
No problem. Just bend the resulting column in half 37 times.
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Finally.. (Score:4, Funny)
Every time you use an unspecified unit as the base in an exponential function, baby Newton cries.
Parent
Space Exploration (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Space Exploration (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
10 Atoms thick? (Score:2, Interesting)
As per wikipedia,
Diameter range: 62 pm (He) to 520 pm (Cs) (data page)
Atom @ Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
It seems that the "thickness" of an atom varies. I've never understood why it is used as a unit of measure.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
In this instance, it seems highly likely that they're referring to atoms of carbon as those are the atoms which compose the material involved.
Re:10 Atoms thick? (Score:4, Informative)
A carbon atom has a covalent radius of about 80pm, but the atoms in sheets of graphite aren't bonded together. I don't know how far apart the atoms would rest, but it's going to be much farther than they would bond.
Parent
Re:10 Atoms thick? (Score:4, Informative)
Not that much farther apart, since the article says that the sheets are less than 1nm thick.
The figure he's quoting is a diameter, which would be the 2d dimensions of the sheet on the surface of the silicon they grew it on. It's the 5nm diameter that makes this exciting as a memory technology since that is very dense.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I too read TFA and it seems to me they are leaving out the most important part(unless I missed it, which is: How many read/writes can they get out of this before it is toast? Because it can be the smallest, toughest little chip in the world but if you only get a couple of dozen read/writes out of it before it is toast than it'll be pretty damned useless. current read/write for NAND flash is up to,what, 1 million? So at the very least they'll need to shoot for that, and if you want to use it in space explora
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The current things that are holding it back right now are probably mass distribution and reliability. Honestly though, it will take a lot more to convince me that we'll be using graphene-based memory chips someday.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There are 10 atoms, so that's 800pm, which is close to 1nm yeah. :)
Which, uh, you figured out to much greater accuracy than I know how to in another post. Hehe.
Re:10 Atoms thick? (Score:5, Informative)
Google tells me that 5 nanometers = 5000 picometers. Is my math off? It seems like there is a factor of 10 between how thick this stuff is and how thick Carbon is.
One is talking about thickness, the other a diameter. The next paragraph of the article it says the sheets are a little under 1nm thick, and 10 C atoms would be around 800pm so that's a little under 1nm. The 5nm diameter would then be the other dimensions, these grown sheets are presumably circular. That dimension is important because that indicates how densely you could pack them on a surface.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you, that makes much more sense. I think I've got it now. Let me try explaining it with a holiday metaphore:
What they have created is, say, like a cookie. Each of these little cookies are 5 nanometeres in diameter. It's important to know that, because it lets us know how many cookies we can fit on our cookie pan. Each of these cookies are about 1nm tall. This is important because it affects how many of these cookie trays we could stack on top of each other in the oven.
I was having a problem conceptual
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The math isn't hard, but I have to take a shit so I can't do it right now.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Which is why everything should be measured in Libraries of Congress.
Who needs new graphite memory? (Score:5, Funny)
You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper.
You know, pencils make pretty good r/w memory, too, although the number of r/w cycles is limited.
Re:Who needs new graphite memory? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, pencils make pretty good r/w memory, too, although the number of r/w cycles is limited.
Your comment is clearly funny, but I wonder how these last compared to other forms of graphite.
The article doesn't seem to mention anything about this memory's reliability or wear -- even theoretical stuff would be fine considering that the technology is relatively new.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, pencils make pretty good r/w memory
You can prototype this new technology at home. All you need is a 4000H pencil, a laboratory-grade pencil sharpener, a microscope, and a steady hand.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, pencils make pretty good r/w memory, too, although the number of r/w cycles is limited.
Please explain to me how my pencil can do the read part of r/w memory.
Re:Who needs new graphite memory? (Score:5, Funny)
You know, pencils make pretty good r/w memory, too, although the number of r/w cycles is limited.
Please explain to me how my pencil can do the read part of r/w memory.
Well look at you, you're all the fun at parties, aren't you?
Parent
So.... (Score:5, Funny)
no more microwaving your hard drive to aid in data destruction.
Re:So.... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure that microwaving your hard drive only aids in microwave destruction.
Parent
Graphene for write-only memory (Score:5, Funny)
Graphene balloons (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've worked with graphite before in a lab (we used it as a substrate for STM [wikipedia.org].
Using scotch tape to pull up layers of graphite must be a common technique: we used it too. There are many kinds of graphite. Using crystalline graphite (found in nature), you could use the tape to pull up a nice thin layer.
Being around improvised solutions using common materials was one of my favorite things about lab work.
Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
"...we grow it from the vapor phase..."
Literally, vaporware.
Phew! (Score:2, Funny)
I guess soon (Score:5, Funny)
the RIAA et al will be wanting royalties off every pencil sold and Canada will have a pencil tax?
She told me size doesn't matter... (Score:5, Informative)
Reading the articles, it appears the size is nice, but it isn't the biggest deal here. They're projecting a bit smaller than 10nm, which is twice as small as next-generation flash drives that "projections show ... will reach its limit of 20nm by around 2012."
The biggest deal here seems to be power management.
What distinguishes graphene from other next-generation memories is the on-off power ratio - the amount of juice a circuit holds when it's on, as opposed to off. "It's huge - a million-to-one," said Tour. "Phase change memory, the other thing the industry is considering, runs at 10-to-1. That means the 'off' state holds, say, one-tenth the amount of electrical current than the 'on' state."
Current tends to leak from an "off" that's holding a charge. "That means in a 10-by-10 grid, 10 'offs' would leak enough to look like they were 'on.' With our method, it would take a million 'offs' in a line to look like 'on,'" he said. "So this is big. It allows us to make a much larger array."
Graphene/Graphite (Score:5, Informative)
Graphene has been studied extensively in the last few years. Carbon Nanotubes were on the rise (which are just rolled up sheets of single layer graphite) but the current difficulties to manipulate those to create devices staggered their advance. Graphene ( or Graphite for that matter) is a little easier to manage because it's like a 2 -D sheet and it can be laid/printed off a substrate more easily.
The current major problem of graphene is the lack of a sizable band-gap which is typically required for semiconductor modulation. We may see a breakthrough in the following years if people figure out a way to overcome this barrier.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Budweiser?
Re: (Score:2)
holy crap! I am setting up a graphite memory chip manufacturing plant at home tonight. I just need to stop by staples and pick up some supplies !
Make sure to go to the right Staples. The article says you need 10 thick Adams to get a flash.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
You're doing it wrong, you should have counted from zero.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not really, you'll just need to try and take a very important test with it.. it'll break almost immediately..