Showing posts with label Silicon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silicon. Show all posts
The latest developments in memory have focused primarily on increasing bandwidth and reducing the voltage, and although there has been an increase in speed, the ultimate benefit to the user may not have been so tangible as expected. Still, improvements are still exploring different, and this time, researchers at the National Laboratory of Taiwan Nanodevices and the University of California Berlekey have created a memory based on silicon nanodots, which can be written and erased up to one hundred times faster than current memory products.
Many users are surprised by the speed that today can offer solid state drives. However, this speed is palpable compared to what they can do the hard drives. Now, faced with something like the RAM, it becomes very difficult to think that SSDs are not turtles. SSD best market offer figures of 500 or 600 megabytes per second reading and about 400-500 megabytes per second writing, but by way of example, DDR3 operating at a frequency of 100 MHz has a maximum transfer 6.400 megabytes per second. In other words, the non-volatile memory technology we use today still has plenty of room to grow and evolve. Speed is a fundamental point, but we must not neglect details and durability.
Recently, a group of researchers at the National Laboratory of Taiwan Nanodevices and the University of California Berlekey presented information on a new type of nonvolatile memory based on silicon nanodots. Each nanopunto, which has a diameter no greater than three nanometers, plays the role of a bit. The points are then covered with a metal layer, and through the firing of a green laser high precision (has less than microsecond range), you can switch between loading and unloading of nanodots, effectively creating a "1 "and" 0 "needed. According to published information, the memory of nanodots could be written and erased up to one hundred times faster than current flash memory, and method of fabrication of this memory would be compatible with existing CMOS production lines, so that the transition to that technology should not be so traumatic for manufacturers.
Of course, there are still many details to resolve and clarify. First, the memory uses an average of seven volts, although a number that would not be a problem, is likely future developments in this technology seek to reduce. Secondly, either nothing has been said in regard to storage density. Currently, the nanodots have a diameter of three nanometers, but if you plan large-scale implementation, one of the most important objectives is to seek ways to reduce that size. A hundred times increase in speed of writing is certainly tempting, but hopefully they can efficiently exploit this discovery, especially if we talk about the cost.
One of the factors hindering the popularization of solar panels is their cost. But it is possible that in future this situation will change, as Antony Cox, University of Cambridge has developed a system for producing silicon with sufficient quality to produce photovoltaic panels 80% more efficient in terms of quality and price . The process also produces a 90% less CO 2 than those normally used, is based on a previous process known as FFC Cambridge and could lead to a new generation of solar panels cheaper.
No one doubts that solar energy has the potential to replace the burning of fossil fuels in producing electricity. But today is still more profitable to extract oil or burn coal to generate electricity to install solar panels. The cost, a factor that is very difficult to set aside when designing a power generating facility, may begin to tip the balance toward the side of the photovoltaic panels if they significantly reduced price. In this sense, a new production process quality silicon to manufacture solar panels has been tuned by Antony Cox, University of Cambridge. The new system, which allows for solar grade silicon is 80% more efficient (in terms of energy consumption and costs) and produces 90% less CO2. It is based on a procedure known as FFC Cambridge, developed by Professor Derek Fray and colleagues at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, University of Cambridge, but first applied to silicon. It is in the final stages of research and development.
Silicon is the material used in photovoltaic cells, so continually looking for new processes to produce what the manufacturers called solar grade silicon. But Cox says it almost always comes to manufacturing processes that "require a lot of energy, are extremely complex and fail to become a business process." The manufacturing methods used to produce silicon generate about 10 tons of CO2 per tonne of silicon produced, and the refinement stage generates another 45 tonnes of CO2 and other toxic gases. It does not take a genius to note that, although solar energy is known for being clean and renewable technology used in the manufacture of photovoltaic panels necessary to take advantage is far from being environmentally correct. According to Cox, "it is ironic that the process used in the manufacture of 95% required by the industry silicon photovoltaic panels produced need to work for about six years to produce the same amount of energy used to manufacture them."
