  The geometrical and performance scaling of silicon CMOS integrated circuit
technology over the past 50 years has enabled many affordable new products for
business and consumer applications. Recognizing that Flash is approaching its
ultimate physical scaling limits within the next 10 years or so, the global
electronics research community has begun an intense search for a new paradigm
and technology for extending the functional scaling of memory technologies.
Several promising nonvolatile memory concepts have emerged, based on different
switching and retention mechanisms from those of Flash memory, e.g., STTRAM,
RRAM, PCM and more recently, resistive memories based on carbon, which are the
topic of this paper. This paper will introduce into the diverse field of carbon
materials by recollecting some effects in carbon that can be used to produce a
multiple time switchable, non-volatile unipolar resistive memory with potential
high scalability down to atomic dimensions. Carbon-based memory is a
non-volatile resistive memory, therefore, the same architectures, circuits,
select transistor or diodes like in ReRAM or PCRAM can be considered as
implementation. The big advantage of carbon memory might be the high
temperature retention of 250 C, which makes it attractive for automotive and
harsh conditions. This is a white paper for the ITRS meeting on emerging
research devices (ERD) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on August 25-26, 2014.
