Information storage articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • Article |

    Employing light-transformable polymers, multiple physical unclonable functions are demonstrated within a single device with all-optical reversible reconfigurability. Such devices may enable quantum secure authentication and nonlinear cryptographic key generation applications.

    • Sara Nocentini
    • , Ulrich Rührmair
    •  & Francesco Riboli

  • Feature |

    Frustrated by reproducibility in electrical measurements on ferroelectric films, Lane Martin, Jon-Paul Maria and Darrell Schlom discuss tactics to reliably synthesize ‘good’ ferroelectric samples, especially in the search for superior materials and device heterostructures.

    • Lane W. Martin
    • , Jon-Paul Maria
    •  & Darrell G. Schlom

  • Article |

    Thin films of BaTiO3 do not possess the same small switching fields and energies as the single-crystal form, hindering applications. Here, thin films are synthesized that enable switching for voltages <100 mV and fields <10 kV cm–1, and a pathway to subnanosecond switching is presented.

    • Y. Jiang
    • , E. Parsonnet
    •  & L. W. Martin

  • News & Views |

    A substantial spin–orbit interaction is introduced in a purely silicon heterostructure and can be tuned through an applied gate voltage.

    • Christopher H. Marrows

  • News & Views |

    Two distinct topological states that are closely tied to the spin configurations of a layered compound, here MnBi2Te4, have been demonstrated. Such control of the topological state should enable new opportunities to realize quantum and spintronic devices.

    • Peng Wei
    •  & Jagadeesh S. Moodera

  • News & Views |

    Monatomic glassy antimony can now be achieved via melt-quenching in a nanoconfined volume in a device setting. In contrast to alloys currently used in phase-change memories, deviation from optimized composition is no longer an issue in this simple material.

    • Wei Zhang
    •  & Evan Ma

  • Letter |

    Monatomic glasses formed by rapidly quenching Sb films from a molten state are shown to work as phase change materials for memory applications at room temperature.

    • Martin Salinga
    • , Benedikt Kersting
    •  & Abu Sebastian

  • News & Views |

    Engineering channels for ion transport in a SiGe solid-state electrolyte layer allows one to significantly decrease the spatial and temporal variations of the electrical characteristics in resistive switching memories.

    • Dmitri B. Strukov

  • Letter |

    The superconductivity is found to control the magnetic configuration in GdN/Nb/GdN spin valves as a result of an antiferromagnetic exchange interaction arising from the coupling between the superconducting condensation energy and the magnetic state.

    • Yi Zhu
    • , Avradeep Pal
    •  & Zoe H. Barber

  • News & Views |

    The controllable and reversible growth of ferroelastic domains in a ferroelectric thin film with composition and strain gradients may enable new devices.

    • Kathrin Dörr

  • Commentary |

    Nucleic acid memory has a retention time far exceeding electronic memory. As an alternative storage media, DNA surpasses the information density and energy of operation offered by flash memory.

    • Victor Zhirnov
    • , Reza M. Zadegan
    •  & William L. Hughes

  • Article |

    The spin Hall effect plays a central role in generating and manipulating spin currents, but its magnitude is ultimately fixed by spin–orbit coupling effects. It is now shown that the spin-Hall-effect angle can be tuned electrically in GaAs.

    • N. Okamoto
    • , H. Kurebayashi
    •  & C. H. W. Barnes

  • Letter |

    The Jahn–Teller distortion is an electronic effect that is known to couple charge, orbital and magnetic ordering phenomena in many complex solids. Using a combination of scattering and microscopy approaches, it is now shown that cooperative Jahn–Teller distortions in Na5/8MnO2 are coupled to an unusual ordering of Na vacancies.

    • Xin Li
    • , Xiaohua Ma
    •  & Gerbrand Ceder

  • News & Views |

    By following three empirical rules it is possible to design and fabricate magnetic heterostructures or even devices whose magnetization can be controlled by means of circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses, instead of applied magnetic fields.

    • Alexey V. Kimel

  • Article |

    Magnetic memory devices are typically based on ferromagnetic materials. Now, a memory resistor based on the antiferromagnetic alloy FeRh is demonstrated at room temperature.

    • X. Marti
    • , I. Fina
    •  & R. Ramesh

  • News & Views |

    The observation that disorder leads to a transition from metallic to insulating behaviour in the crystalline phase of GeSb2Te4 provides a new look at its transport properties, crucial for old and new applications of phase-change materials in non-volatile-memory devices.

    • Michael Schreiber

  • Article |

    Phase-change materials are used in computer memories for their switching between amorphous and crystalline phases. However, even the crystalline state shows disorder, with extremely small electron mean free paths. The discovery that, depending on annealing temperature, this disorder leads to a metal–insulator transition in the crystalline phase provides a completely new look at the transport properties of these compounds.

    • T. Siegrist
    • , P. Jost
    •  & M. Wuttig

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