
Researchers discover ferroelectricity at the atomic scale - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2020-04-ferroelectricity-atomic-scale.html
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guerrilla
I was wonderimg if this was expected and the answer is yes. It was predicted
80 years ago. Here's another article with a simple explanation of it and its
dual phenomenon:

[https://phys.org/news/2018-10-validate-year-old-
ferroelectri...](https://phys.org/news/2018-10-validate-year-old-
ferroelectric-theory.html)

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jarfil
If I get that right, a 1nm layer should behave more like an ideal material,
rather that the average of several multi-nm hysterons.

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SiempreViernes
It’s just 1nm in one direction, so you merely force the hysterons to lie along
the plane.

They claim ferroelectricity, not a _new_ form of ferroelectricity, presumably
this means the old theory applies.

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wallacoloo
Edit: oops, I confused ferroelectricity with ferromagnetism. This comment is
about the latter... not strictly related to the article, although there’s at
least _some_ similarity between the effects.

I’ve been wondering if the ferromagnetic effect could be used to make mid-
scale integrated logic devices at home. CMOS devices (and really just anything
which depends on PN junctions) are notoriously difficult to manufacture
outside of a controlled setting and often require dangerous chemicals. On the
other hand, the ferromagnetic effect works on a macro scale (read: hobbyist-
friendly) with fewer process steps and friendlier materials for the most basic
implementations.

You can make memory devices out of it from just two materials — a toroid-
shaped ferromagnetic “core” (e.g. nickel) and a wire running through the core
(which can be used to polarize the core, or to read its polarization). That’s
core memory, used extensively after the era of vacuum tubes but before the era
of flash or silicon-based memories.

To my knowledge it was never used much for logic, but the row + column select
of a core memory circuit perform an AND operation, and if you search around
you can find at least a few papers proposing combinatorial logic based on
those ferromagnetic cores.

It’s _two_ materials (a ferromagnetic material and a conductor), it’s
something that was actually used for a decade in industry (core memory), and
you can get to 1 MHz even with macro-scale devices. Ferromagnetic devices seem
like a hobbyist’s dream! The biggest missing link seems to be a way to
automate their manufacturing, since threading wire through a thousand cores to
make a multiplier sounds too tedious for me.

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yummypaint
Pardon my ignorance on this topic. Anyone have a sense of what the response
time is like? Is the idea to use the hysteresis for storage? How do cycle
limitations compare with other storage tech?

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peter_retief
Is this not the problem graphene was going to solve?

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aspenmayer
Graphene, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

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phendrenad2
So maybe FRAM will finally have it's day.

