With summer just around the corner, temperatures are starting to rise in the Northern Hemisphere and most of us know what happens when our smartphones and other portable electronics overheat.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have unveiled an ultra-resistant memory device that can withstand extreme temperatures, a development that will benefit not only smartphones but also AI devices that operate in harsh environments.
A recently published study in the journal Natural electronics from Deep Jariwala and Roy Olsson of the University of Pennsylvania, along with their engineering teams, demonstrate a memory technology that can withstand temperatures up to 1100°F. These high tolerance levels were maintained for more than 60 hours and demonstrated exceptional stability and reliability.
Only megabytes – for now
The team designed a non-volatile device, meaning it could retain information without an active power source. Unlike traditional silicon-based flash drives that start to fail around 392°F, the team’s device used ferroelectric aluminum scandium nitride (AlScN). AlScN has the unique ability to maintain specific electrical states even at significantly higher temperatures.
The ultra-resistant memory device consists of a metal-insulator-metal configuration with a fine layer of AlScN sandwiched between nickel and platinum electrodes. This unique design has been carefully planned and executed to ensure compatibility with high-temperature silicon carbide logic devices, further allowing the memory device to function alongside high-performance computing systems intended for extreme temperatures.
“Conventional devices that use small silicon transistors have a difficult time operating in high-temperature environments, a limitation that limits silicon processors, so silicon carbide is used instead,” says Deep Jariwala.
“While silicon carbide technology is great, it doesn’t come close to the processing power of silicon processors, so advanced processing and data-intensive computing like AI can’t really run at high temperatures or under harsh conditions. The stability of our memory device could allow for tighter integration of memory and processing, improving the speed, complexity, and efficiency of computing. We call this ‘memory-enhanced compute’ and are working with other teams to pave the way for AI in new environments.”
Despite the remarkable progress, the new technology will initially only be available in smaller capacities. Jariwala told us: “Based on the current size of the devices and the scalability of our manufacturing process, we can easily reach 10 megabytes to hundreds of megabytes of storage capacity. Our goal is to commercialize these Megabyte-scale chips through our start-up company in the near and medium future.”