Transistors can now both process and store information

Purdue University engineers have developed a way that the millions of tiny switches used to process information—called transistors—could also store that information as one device. The method, detailed in a paper published in Nature Electronics, accomplishes this by solving another problem: combining a transistor with higher-performing memory technology than is used in most computers, called ferroelectric RAM. Researchers have been trying for decades to integrate the two, but issues happen at the interface between a ferroelectric material and silicon, the semiconductor material that makes up transistors. Instead, ferroelectric RAM operates as a separate unit on-chip, limiting its potential to make computing much more efficient.

A team discovered how to overcome the mortal enemy relationship between silicon and a ferroelectric material.The result is a so-called ferroelectric semiconductor field-effect transistor, built in the same way as transistors currently used on computer chips. The material, alpha indium selenide, not only has ferroelectric properties, but also addresses the issue of a conventional ferroelectric material usually acting as an insulator rather than a semiconductor due to a so-called wide "band gap," which means that electricity cannot pass through and no computing happens. Alpha indium selenide has a much smaller band gap, making it possible for the material to be a semiconductor without losing ferroelectric properties.

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