A Nanowire Memory Cells Has Been Discovered For Superconducting Computer

A nanowire memory cell have been discovered by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This new invention is an important step to develop a miniaturized low-dissipation memory for the faster superconducting computer.

The new technology of nanowire memory cells is created by a professor from Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Alexey Bezryadin and a graduate student Andrew Murphy. They developed the technology in collaboration with a theoretical physics professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Dmitri Averin.

In their new invention, the nanowire memory cells consist of the two superconducting nanowires, attached to two unevenly spaced electrodes. The device was written using lithography from the electron-beam.

The electrode and two nanowire memory cells create an asymmetric and closed superconducting loop called superconducting quantum interference device or SQUID. A direction of the current that flows through the loop is similar to the binary code of 0 or 1. The result of their research has been published in the New Journal of Physic vol. 19, June 2017.

“This is very exciting," Professor Bezryadin said about the new nanowire memory cells technology he has just invented. "Such superconducting memory cells can be scaled down in size to the range of few tens of nanometers, and are not subject to the same performance issues as other proposed solutions.”

Prior to the invention, scaling down the memory cells to a nanoscale levels has become challenges for scientists to create a supercomputer that can compute really fast without heat dissipation. This nanowire memory cell has given the change for a supercomputer to become faster and more powerful. It also provides a more stable memory compared to other proposed devices.

The new nanowire memory cells have significantly reduced the size of superconductor computers and provide a more cost effective solution for a mass production. As the Bezryadin and Murphy's memory cells do not require any ferromagnetic components compared to the single flux-quanta devices, which currently available.