HONEYCOMB MEMORY
IBM says it may have found a way to dramatically increase the density of memory chips. This limit is determined by the wavelength of light used to carve the logic gates on chips. Now researchers from IBM鈥檚 T. J. Watson Research Center in New York say it is possible to bypass this limitation by exploiting the ability of certain materials to self-organise into a regular molecular pattern.
Announcing their results at an electronics meeting in Washington DC last week, the team said they started out with a mixture of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polystyrene. When heated, the polymers separate and the polystyrene forms a honeycomb structure in which hexagonal holes are filled with PMMA. Dissolving the PMMA leaves a hexagonal mould in which crystals of silicon 20 nanometres across can be grown. With the polystyrene removed, the crystals can be used to store charge, making them suitable for high-density memories that retain their data even after the power is switched off.
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E-PAPER HITS THE STREETS
Electronic paper hit the market for the first time last week in the form of a poster-sized display aimed at bars and supermarkets. The pixels of the electronic paper are formed by rotatable wax balls roughly 100 micrometres across, that are black on one side and white on the other and embedded in a flexible, rubbery poster sheet that weighs only a few tens of grams. The display can be viewed from any angle, and only consumes power when the balls are rotated to change the image.
The paper has been under development for several years, first at Xerox and then at Gyricon, the company it started to commercialise the e-paper technology. Gyricon says the signs will be available from January for around $1300.
MICROSOFT STRIKES RECORD DEAL
A file-sharing standard for distributing copyrighted music and movies has been unveiled by a group backed by Microsoft and the record and music publishing company Universal Music Group.
The standard allows people to share small files containing information about music, video or other data, but not the content itself. Someone downloading the file would then use it to retrieve the actual content in a copy-protected format from a server.
The system is designed to work with desktop computers but also non-PC devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.
