Can Buckyballs Make Flash Memory More Efficient?

The flash memory that is now very common in many devices may get a big boost if this report is correct. It seems that using buckyballs (C60 fullerenes) could operate at a lower voltage (link may be accessible only for a limited time for non subscribers) and thus, make the flash memory devices more efficient.

“We’re the first ones trying to borrow molecular electronics concepts and put them into non-volatile memory,” says electrical engineer Tuo-Hung Hou of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who led the research (T.-H. Hou et al. Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 153109; 2008).

This is also another example of a possible wide-ranging application of physics.

Zz.