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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/G035857/1
Title: Structure and Kinetics in New Phase-Change and Ionic-Migration Memory Media
Principal Investigator: Elliott, Professor SR
Other Investigators:
Greer, Professor AL
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Chemistry
Organisation: University of Cambridge
Scheme: Standard Research
Starts: 01 July 2009 Ends: 31 October 2012 Value (£): 609,062
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Materials Characterisation Materials Processing
Materials Synthesis & Growth
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Panel DatePanel NameOutcome
12 Feb 2009 Materials Prioritisation Panel (Feb 2009) Announced
Summary on Grant Application Form
The current industry-standard technology for non-volatile memory is Flash, involving electrons trapped on the floating gate of a MOSFET. In the near future, no further size-reduction scaling of this will be possible due to technological limitations. Two new non-volatile memory technogies are being developed to replace Flash memory; i) phase-change (PC) media, in which there is a current-induced transformation between amorphous and crystalline states of a material, each having a different electrical resistance; ii) ion-migration or programmable metallization cell (PMC) technology, in which there is a voltage-induced growth of a conducting metallic filament in a solid electrolyte between two electrodes. In both cases, the large resistance changes between 'on' and 'off' states allow binary (and potentially even more, multilevel) data to be stored in a memory cell. The aim of this project is to gain a deep theoretical and experimental understanding of the physical and chemical processes involved in data recording in such memory media, and thereby to design, and synthesize, new memory media with much improved performance.
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Organisation Website: http://www.cam.ac.uk