Big data, huge discovery! Our scientists solve 50-year puzzle

Team’s nano-tech breakthrough

‘Ambition for a global impact’

AS our insatiable need for faster and more data-hungry computers grows, scientists at the University of Limerick have made a nano-tech discovery that could change how we manage computer memory.

The team has solved a puzzle that has baffled physicists for 50 years and claim they may have discovered a low-energy answer to storing and processing ‘big data’.

Researchers at the university’s Bernal Institute say that a newly discovered molecular ‘traffic light’, which can switch between different states, could solve the demands of huge power requirement for increasingly complex computers.

Professor Damien Thompson, research team leader, said ‘big data’ is the Achilles heel of next-generation computing.

The researchers found that a simple metal-organic module could do more than switch between on and off modes, but could actually switch to a third mode, which could be channelled into a memory device.

They discovered that the third state was surprisingly stable, and could be achieved through an unequal sharing of electrons between different sides of the molecule.

Prof. Thompson said the third state was unaffected by extreme ranges in temperature, of -100 to 100C, thereby making it suitable for most conventional computing, as well as future applications.

He said the new molecular memory device could continue working away perfectly for weeks on end.

Prof. Thompson said sciencan tists have long noticed certain materials could ‘breathe’ in an electric or magnetic field, and that sometimes the electron cloud around the molecules lose its symmetry.

‘Whereas here the third asymmetric state is created simply by allowing current to flow through the device,’ he added.

The team’s work has just been published in world journal Nature Nanotechnology, is a result of an international collaboration with the National University of Singapore, the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, and Texas A&M University.

Professor Luuk van der Wielen, director of UL’s Bernal

Institute, said the ‘highimpact’ research supported his team’s ambition to have a worldwide impact in science.

Professor Sean Arkins, dean of science and engineering at UL, said: ‘Researchers at University of Limerick’s Department of Physics continue to pioneer the exploitation of organic materials for electrical applications, and this work places them at the forefront of molecular nanotechnology.’