Keynote talk: Atoms to go…ionic memory and data storage

The adoption of novel materials and device structures will be necessary to overcome the growing limitations of existing memory technologies such as DRAM and Flash in low energy computation and ultra-mobile applications. The alternative that appears to have risen above the other new technology contenders is “resistive memory”, in which information is represented by different values of electrical resistance. In one particularly promising low energy approach to this type of memory, resistance is controlled by the movement of ions coupled with electrochemical processes. These “ionic” resistance-change devices are generally divided into cation cells, based on the growth and dissolution of conductive metallic filaments in a relatively insulating solid electrolyte, and anion cells, which typically utilize the formation and removal of conducting sub-oxide regions in insulating transition metal oxides. Ionic memory is now under investigation in some of the world's top research institutes and companies and has gained sufficient momentum and acceptance to be included in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. This presentation will focus on the materials and operational characteristics of ionic memory, and will discuss, by way of examples from academia and industry, why this technology will likely make its way into data centers and hand-held devices in the not-too-distant future.