C&EN talks with Natia Frank, computer memory pioneer

Abstract

Natia Frank wants to reduce the energy consumption of future computers. The University of Victoria chemist designs and studies novel organic electronic materials, and she recently developed a material that allows computers to write data with light instead of electric current. The material, made of a cobalt dioxolene coupled to a spirooxazine, makes possible a next-generation computer memory known as light-induced random access memory. LI-RAM would be faster than current forms of RAM, require less power, and work for both short-term data processing and long-term data storage. Frank talked with Louisa Dalton about how her LI-RAM material came to be and where she gets her ideas. Why write computer data with light? The philosophy behind what we do is trying to decrease energy demands of all of these technologies that people use. That’s important to me on a personal level. Everything is going to be run by little computers, and