Three-dimensional two-photon memory materials and systems

Abstract

We have been developing a two-photon 3-D memory expected to provide a Tbit storage capacity and a 1 ms access time for secondary storage. Even with this new technology, there still exists a four order of magnitude gap in access times between electronic RAMS and secondary storage. In addition to the existing permanent storage approach, we have begun working on systems, key components, and materials for a dynamic parallel-access 3-D two photon memories that will bridge the gap in primary memory technologies. Over the past three years our team has been developing a write-once mass-storage memory based on two-photon bond dissociation of spirobenzopyran molecules for long lifetime storage. A cache memory must have fast write-erase capability. To achieve this we are beginning to investigate highly sensitive two-photon materials which spontaneous decay (self-erase) to the off state. These materials will be incorporated into dynamic memory systems which continually refresh the memory contents, as in an electronic DRAM. The resulting memory is expected to provide a data capacity of 1 Gbit/cm<SUP>3</SUP> with a 10 ns to 1 microsecond(s) access time and a 10 Tbit/s data rate. In this presentation the latest results of the parallel-access 3-D volume memory using two-photon storage is discussed. We cover material and system considerations for both types of parallel-access memories: fast-access primary storage and large-capacity secondary storage.