R&D: Atomically Sharp Interface Enabled High-Speed Non-Volatile Memory Devices

Nature Nanotechnology has published an article written by Liangmei Wu, Aiwei Wang, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, Jinan Shi, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, Jiahao Yan, Zhang Zhou, Ce Bian, Jiajun Ma, Ruisong Ma, Hongtao Liu, Jiancui Chen, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China,Yuan Huang, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, Wu Zhou, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, Lihong Bao, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China, Min Ouyang, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, Stephen J. Pennycook, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and Department of Materials Science and Engineering & Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore, Sokrates T. Pantelides, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and Department of Physics and Astronomy & Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA, Hong-Jun Gao, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, and Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China.

Abstract: “The development of high-performance memory devices has played a key role in the innovation of modern electronics. Non-volatile memory devices have manifested high capacity and mechanical reliability as a mainstream technology; however, their performance has been hampered by low extinction ratio and slow operational speed. Despite substantial efforts to improve these characteristics, typical write times of hundreds of micro- or milliseconds remain a few orders of magnitude longer than that of their volatile counterparts. Here we demonstrate non-volatile, floating-gate memory devices based on van der Waals heterostructures with atomically sharp interfaces between different functional elements, achieving ultrahigh-speed programming/erasing operations in the range of nanoseconds with extinction ratio up to 10¹⁰. This enhanced performance enables new device capabilities such as multi-bit storage, thus opening up applications in the realm of modern nanoelectronics and offering future fabrication guidelines for device scale up.“