A collaborative effort between researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has made phase-change memory (PCM) more energy efficient and could unlock a revolution in data storage in the future, a press release said.
PCM is a promising data storage technology that uses different material phases to store information. When materials change from their amorphous to crystalline state, they resemble an on/off switch, much like the binary system used for data storage today.
PCM could be used to store information in devices such as cell phones and computers, but affecting the phase change is an energy-intensive process, which has remained a hurdle to large-scale deployment.
In recent work published by the Indo-US collaboration, researchers achieved the phase change using one billionth of the energy previously required to work with material indium selenide (In2Se3), potentially starting a new revolution in data storage capabilities.
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