Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Surface patterning

Ancients inspire modern memory

Nature Nanotechnology volume 3, pages 380–381 (2008)Cite this article

A stencilling technique for depositing arrays of nanoscale ferroelectric capacitors on a surface could be useful in data storage devices.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Hand stencils have survived on the walls of caves for tens of thousands of years, storing information about who was there.
Figure 2: The electric dipoles in the ferroelectric layers (pale blue) of the nanocapacitors built by Lee et al. can point up or down, and can be switched by applying a voltage of the correct polarity to the upper electrode (left).

References

  1. Lee, W. et al. Nature Nanotech. 3, 402–407 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Stanishevsky, A. et al. J. Appl. Phys. 92, 3275–3278 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Scott, J. F. Science 315, 954–959 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Cho, Y., Hashimoto, S., Odagawa, N., Tanaka, K. & Hiranaga, Y. Nanotechnology 17, S137–S141 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Evans, P. R. et al. Nano Lett. 7, 1134–1137 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Nagarajan, V. et al. Nature Mater. 2, 43–47 (2003).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Tybell, T., Paruch, P., Giamarchi, T. & Triscone, J.-M. Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 097601 (2002).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. J. Marty Gregg is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland. m.gregg@qub.ac.uk,

    J. Marty Gregg

Authors
  1. J. Marty Gregg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gregg, J. Ancients inspire modern memory. Nature Nanotech 3, 380–381 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2008.192

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2008.192

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing