%0 Journal Article
%K energy consumption
%K velocity
%K electric potential
%K semiconductor
%K storage
%K electrode
%K oxygen
%K direct current
%K Polarization
%K Article
%K memory
%K photovoltaic system
%K research work
%K data storage device
%K illumination
%K memory cell
%K oxygen tension
%K solid state
%K ultraviolet radiation
%A R Guo
%A L You
%A Y Zhou
%A Z.S Lim
%A X Zou
%A L Chen
%A Ramamoorthy Ramesh
%A J Wang
%B Nature Communications
%D 2013
%G eng
%R 10.1038/ncomms2990
%T Non-volatile memory based on the ferroelectric
%V 4
%X The quest for a solid state universal memory with high-storage density, high read/write speed, random access and non-volatility has triggered intense research into new materials and novel device architectures. Though the non-volatile memory market is dominated by flash memory now, it has very low operation speed with ∼10 μs programming and ∼10 ms erasing time. Furthermore, it can only withstand ∼105 rewriting cycles, which prevents it from becoming the universal memory. Here we demonstrate that the significant photovoltaic effect of a ferroelectric material, such as BiFeO 3 with a band gap in the visible range, can be used to sense the polarization direction non-destructively in a ferroelectric memory. A prototype 16-cell memory based on the cross-bar architecture has been prepared and tested, demonstrating the feasibility of this technique. © 2013 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.