The three-year UK-Japan project, co-led by (left) Professor Hiroshi Mizuta of ECS-Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton, and Dr Tsuyoshi Hasegawa (right) Atomic Electronics Group, NIMS, is to build the first non-volatile logic systems, based on three-terminal atom transistors hybridized with nano-electro-mechanical (NEMS) switches.

Initially available as an integrated logic-memory chip so that it can be used in portable devices, this memory retention capacity, will allow devices such as computers and mobile phones to become smaller and lighter.

According to Dr Harold Chong (right )of Southampton’s Nano Research Group, the new device is being developed to address the power issue. "Research has shown that the temperature of chips can be as hot as the surface of the sun," he said.

Researchers aim to increase the non-volatile part of the memory contained on the computer chip. The logic being if the non-volatile memory is expanded, it will not be necessary to apply large amounts of power to the chip for it to retain information in memory.

“There will be huge benefits from the cooperation between the Southampton and NIMS teams,” said Professor Mizuta. “We will be cooperating closely in overcoming current technological bottlenecks and accelerating development of novel non-volatile logic devices.. not been yet achieved with other approaches.”

A key feature will be an “on/off” switch operated by a suspended nanobeam which moves up and down when activated by voltage, resulting in an instant powering of the computer with no time lag.

“The ‘instant’ nature of this switch means that it only needs a few pico watts per transistor resulting in very low power requirements,” said Dr Chong. “There is potentially very low leakage in this device resulting in portable computing equipments that will be lighter and more powerful. This technology will also relieve the bottleneck in information processing, which at the moment is clogged up on its own memory.”

Rresearch is funded by the Engineering and Physical Research Council’s strategic UK-Japan cooperative program with Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).