Edinburgh Scientists Develop Low-Power Memory

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have helped to create a new memory device, using carbon nanotubes and a tiny mechanical arm to vastly improve the speed and efficiency of mobile gadgets.

The mechanical arm will translate data into electrical signals. The nanotubes act as static transistors, and the arm moves up and down to create or break a current running through them at up to a billion times a second. This is much faster and more energy-efficient than conventional memory storage tools, which use electronic devices to convert data into signals.

“This is a novel approach to designing memory storage devices,” said Professor Eleanor Campbell, of the School of Chemistry at Edinburgh University, in a statement. “Using a mechanical method combined with the benefits of nanotechnology enables a system with superior speed and energy efficiency compared with existing devices.”

Improving energy efficiency

The research, carried out in collaboration with Konkuk University and Seoul National University, Korea, has been published in online academic journal Nature Communications. Scientists claim the discovery could lead to significantly faster non-volatile memory, which can be used in MP3 players, smartphones and cameras.

The use of carbon nanotube transistors for memory storage has been limited in the past, because of their low operational speed and short memory retention times. However, researchers in the US have simultaneously been developing a new type of battery, using nanotubes that are 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, which they claim could extend the running time of mobile phones a hundredfold.

According to the team of electrical engineers at Illinois University, the energy consumption of a battery is proportional to the size of the components used to store and retrieve information, so smaller wires result in lower energy usage.

The technology could also have a wider environmental impact, due to the improvement in the efficiency of mobile phones. Using renewable sources of energy – such as solar or kinetic – could at last become a feasible option for charging, because less energy is required to top up the battery, the researchers said.

Devices that run and run

The battery life of mobile devices is increasingly becoming a distinguishing factor, as competition hots up in the market. Last month, Lenovo, Sony, Dell and HP kicked off a power-play with claims that their various laptop releases could offer battery life of between 10 and 32 hours. The workday battery-operated notebook is now a reality, it seems.

Meanwhile, the pressure is growing for tablet manufacturers to step up their game, following the launch of Apple’s iPad 2, which boasts ten hours of battery life. Research in Motion is floundering on this front, with owners of the PlayBook only able to use the device for four hours before plugging it in.

Researchers from the University of Maryland have also been working to improve the capacity of lithium-ion batteries. Last year it was reported that a biological virus known as the Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) could increase the surface area of electrodes in a battery, resulting in a ten-fold increase in energy capacity.