Harald Schone attended the Non Volatile Memory Technology Symposium (NVMTS) in Portland Oregon.  Harald also was the session chairman for the Ion Conducting and Flash Memory sessions.  Amy Wilson of Section 5140 was part of the conference organizing staff handling the registration and event coordination activities.  The conference had over 50 papers and posters on new nonvolatile memory technologies.

The largest group of papers was for phase change memories.  Research in phase change memories continue to focus on defects and materials changes that limit retention and endurance performance.  The main trend in nonvolatile memories is that for IC processes that are below 22nm, nonvolatile memories will no longer be based on charge storage like today’s flash memories.  Instead all of the nonvolatile memories for these ultra scaled/nanometer manufacturing processes will be based on resistive switching.   Resistive switching means defining a logic 1 or 0 by changes in resistance.

There are at least 8 broad types of physical effects that can be used to make nonvolatile memory cells.  These include research areas of nano-mechanical, molecular configuration, phase change, and several others.  The conference is a mix of academic researchers and large company research divisions reporting on their latest results.

Tags: Parts Technology, Sig Events