Integrating advanced nanomaterials into transformative technologies

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Moore's Law, the touchstone for advances in microelectronics, has bench-marked improvements in computer processing power over the past 40 years. The demand for continued increase is insatiable, but conventional technologies will succumb to fundamental limits on device size within a decade. My vision is removal of this roadblock to Moore's Law. My solution is to replace today's binary technologies with a range of intrinsically multi-state devices, thereby dramatically increasing performance without a need for further miniaturization. During my fellowship I will build a research group to explore the physics, materials and advances in characterisation techniques required to enable this transformation. My core research programme takes as an exemplar resistive random access memory (Re-RAM), a genuinely next-generation technology that could make obsolete both conventional random access memory (RAM) and hard disk drives (HDDs). It offers in a single device the non-volatility and write-endurance of HDDs with the rapid access times of conventional RAM. Furthermore, it has the potential for 'stacked', 3-dimensional architectures and intrinsic multi-state functionality, which together could truly revolutionise data storage densities. Re-RAM materials undergo reversible chemical or structural changes under an applied voltage, giving a substantial change in device resistance that can function as a switch or stored data 'bit'. However, even basic understanding of the fabrication and nano-patterning protocols, let alone the underlying physics of the switching mode, is lacking for most candidate materials. Thus, it is not currently possible to build reliable multi-state devices. Moving the nanoscience to application can only be enabled by substantial research into processing and function. In many cases, the present uncertainty is simply because appropriate tools for nano-resolved characterization are only now becoming available. One of the most exciting aspects of this fellowship is my proposed development of in-situ electron microscopy characterization of prototypical devices during operation. For the first time, it will be possible to use electron microscopy to image devices and probe their chemistry on the nanometre scale whilst simultaneously applying voltage or current pulses to the sample. This advance will enable a full understanding of Re-RAM devices, their kinetics, scalability and their tolerance to defects. Ultimately, it will lead to improved device design and I confidently expect it to have a variety of beneficiaries outside of this programme. A further transformative aspect of the Fellowship is that I will augment Re-RAM far beyond the current state of the art by incorporating multiferroic materials. These materials retain well-defined electric and magnetic states that could be incorporated into the basic Re-RAM device but switched independently, further expanding the multi-state capability to truly transcend today's binary technologies. During this Fellowship, improved fabrication protocols will be developed and the combined functionality and intrinsic scalability of these new technologies will be assessed. The switching behaviour and structure-function correlation will be imaged directly, leading to unprecedented insights and, potentially, discovering a host of new and exciting physics.