Photovoltaic ferroelectric memory has been created. It takes less than 10 nanoseconds to write to and read the cells, and recording the data requires about 3 volts. The leading nonvolatile RAM technology, flash, takes about 10,000 times longer to read and write, and needs 15 volts to record.
Note – Memristors are supposed to have read times of about 10 nanoseconds, with write and erase times of 0.1 nanosecond. HP is supposed to produce commercial memristors by the end of this year.
Photovoltaic ferroelectric memory technology will need to be made much smaller before it is competitive. Commercial flash memory is built using equipment that can pattern features as small as 22 nanometres, whereas the strips in the photovoltaic ferroelectric memory device are a hefty 10 micrometres wide.
When light shines on this prototype memory device, it produces voltages in that make it possible to read out the information in the 16-cell array of digital bits.
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