High speed, nonvolatile, low power memory is the goal of a great many researchers as everybody wants greater speeds and less power consumption in computing devices these days. One type of memory that may achieve this goal uses silicon oxide to store data, but has some problems. Researchers at Rice University though have found a way around one of the more important issues; crosstalk.
Crosstalk is when rewriting one bit of data causes neighboring bits to be rewritten as well, and can cripple the capabilities of any memory system. This has plagued silicon oxide memory devices, which have a crossbar design. In some instances, an array of 1024 cells would only have 63 capable of working without crosstalk. The Rice researchers have solved the problem though by adding a diode to the current one-resistor design. This addition prevents the electronic states of one memory cell from leaking to another.
The prototype memory the researchers built is purely proof-of-concept as a single kilobit of nonvolatile data storage is not going to compete with modern day flash memory. However the researchers note that they intentionally did not attempt to miniaturize the technology, as the means to do so has already been demonstrated, so there was no need to show it again.
Source: Rice University