14 DAY TRIAL // Most people who own a computer know that turning it on can be very stressful. Booting and rebooting can take forever, and you really need to get something done very fast, at times. With this in mind, three universities have joined forces in a strife to figure out a way in which to use ferroelectric materials (which can now be found in ATMs and fuel cards) to control a computer's booting sequence. The goal of the research is to instantly turn the PC or Mac on, without having to wait for one or two minutes.
The effort joins together experts from the Cornell University, the Penn State University and the Northwestern University, and has only recently managed to yield conclusive results. The team have succeeded in endowing the materials that make up the common computer transistors with ferroelectric properties, something that physicists have been trying to do for centuries. Details of the study, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), appear in the April 17th issue of the journal Science.
“It's great to see fundamental research on ordered layering of materials, or epitaxial growth, under strained conditions pay off in such a practical manner, particularly as it relates to ultra-thin ferroelectrics,” the NSF Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team Award Program Director Lynnette Madsen said. “Several hybrid transistors have been proposed specifically with ferroelectrics in mind. By creating a ferroelectric directly on silicon, we are bringing this possibility closer to realization,” Darrell Schlom, the Cornell University materials scientist who has led the recent study, added.
In their experiments, the scientists have used strontium titanate, a material that can be found in ferroelectric devices, but that is not ferroelectric in its natural state. Schlom has then taken the titanate and has placed it on a silicon substrate, which is the basic raw material used today in manufacturing transistors. The silicon and titanate have been arranged in such a manner that the first has begun to squeeze the latter, which, under pressure, has exhibited ferroelectric properties.