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World’s tiniest computer memory – a big step towards quantum computing
Scientists stored information for 112 seconds in what may become the world’s tiniest computer memory: magnetic “spins” in the centers or nuclei of atoms.
Then they retrieved and read the data electronically – a big step toward using the new kind of memory for both faster conventional and superfast “quantum” computers.
The apparatus shown here contains a phosphorus-doped silicon chip, only 1 millimeter square, that was used to demonstrate how data can be stored in magnetic spins within the centers or nuclei of phosphorus atoms, and then how that data can be accessed and read electronically. Image Credit : C. Dane McCamey, University of Utah.
However, some big technical hurdles remain: the nuclear spin storage-and-read-out apparatus works only at 3.2 degrees Kelvin, or slightly above absolute zero – the temperature at which atoms almost freeze to a standstill, and only can jiggle a little bit.
And the apparatus must be surrounded by powerful magnetic fields roughly 200,000 times stronger than Earth’s.
“Yes, you could immediately build a memory chip this way, but do you want a computer that has to be operated at 454 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and in a big national magnetic laboratory environment?” Boehme says. “First we want to learn how to do it at higher temperatures, which are more practical for a device, and without these strong magnetic fields to align the spins.”
As for obtaining an electrical readout of data held within atomic nuclei, “nobody has done this before,” he adds.
Two years ago, another group of scientists reported storing so-called quantum data for two seconds within atomic nuclei, but they did not read it electronically, as Boehme and colleagues did in the new study, which used classical data (0 or 1) rather than quantum data (0 and 1 simultaneously). The technique was developed in a 2006 study by Boehme, who showed it was feasible to read data stored in the net magnetic spin of 10,000 electrons in phosphorus atoms embedded in a silicon semiconductor.
The new study puts together nuclear storage of data with an electrical readout of that data, and “that’s what’s new,” Boehme says.
The study has been published Friday, Dec. 17 in the journal Science. (ANI)
Reference:
Electronic Spin Storage in an Electrically Readable Nuclear Spin Memory with a Lifetime >100 Seconds
D. R. McCamey, J. Van Tol, G. W. Morley, and C. Boehme
Science 17 December 2010: 330 (6011), 1652-1656. [DOI:10.1126/science.1197931]