Researchers from University of Nebraska-Lincoln have employed Nobel Prize-winning material graphene to enhance the properties of a component primed for the next generation of high-speed, high-capacity random-access memory (RAM).
The team engineered and tested improvements in the performance of a memory structure known as a ferroelectric tunnel junction.
Ferroelectric materials naturally boast the quality of "non-volatility", meaning they maintain their polarisation - and can hence retain stored information - even in the absence of an external power source.
The team became the first to design a ferroelectric junction with electrodes made of graphene - a carbon material only one atom thick.
They placed ammonia between graphene and the ferroelectric layer.
The researchers found that their graphene-ammonia combination improved the reliability of RAM devices and allows them to read data without having to rewrite it.
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"This is one of the most important differences between previous technology that has already been commercialised and this emergent ferroelectric technology," said Alexei Gruverman, a Charles Bessey Professor of physics who co-authored the study.
The findings appeared in the journal Nature Communications.