Technophiles who have been dreaming of mobile devices that run longer on lighter, slimmer batteries may soon find their wish has been granted.

Three parallel memory bits with carbon nanotube electrodes (false color image based on topographic profile from atomic force microscopy). The middle bit is in the “off” state, the other two are “on.” The silicon dioxide substrate is shown in blue. | Image courtesy Eric Pop

University of Illinois engineers have developed a form of ultra-low-power digital memory that is faster and uses 100 times less energy than similar available memory. The technology could give future portable devices much longer battery life between charges.

Led by electrical and computer engineering professor Eric Pop, the team will publish its results in an upcoming issue of Science magazine and online in the March 10 Science Express.

“I think anyone who is dealing with a lot of chargers and plugging things in every night can relate to wanting a cell phone or laptop whose batteries can last for weeks or months,” said Pop, who is also affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois.

The flash memory used in mobile devices today stores bits as charge, which requires high programming voltages and is relatively slow. Industry has been exploring faster, but higher power phase-change materials (PCM) as an alternative. In PCM memory a bit is stored in the resistance of the material, which is switchable.

Pop’s group lowered the power per bit to 100 times less than existing PCM memory by focusing on one simple, yet key factor: size.

Rather than the metal wires standard in industry, the group used carbon nanotubes, tiny tubes only a few nanometers in diameter – 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) are participating in the development of an application to integrate electronic ID data into an SIM mobile phone card so as to use the terminal as a means of personal identifications

The prototype of mDNI, recently presented at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, allows secure identification of the user by his eID data stored in the mobile phone SIM card. "The SIM cards are like small computers that we carry in our mobile devices allowing us to store information and execute applications, with the advantage of providing a high level security,” explained the UC3M Professor from the Telematic Engineering Department, Celeste Campo, the principal researcher for this project which is being carried out in collaboration with Telefónica R D and Secuware.