Phase-change materials

Nanomaterials to provide 'memories of the future'

Imagine a video of your whole life from birth to death on something as small as a creditcard. Exeter's engineers and physicists led by Professors David Wright and Rob Hicken are working together to develop new nanoscale materials that could make this a reality.

Engineering Professor David Wright says: "The amount of data generated and stored in the world is ever-increasing, so we need to build the capacity of memory devices and at the same time, for environmental and portability reasons, make them smaller and consume less power. Conventional approaches to data storage such as magnetic hard-disks, DVDs and 'Flash' memory sticks are facing difficult technological barriers to further progress. Exeter is working with research laboratories from around the world to develop new materials and techniques, such as scanning probe based memories and magnetic random access memories that circumvent the limitations of conventional storage technologies."