New understanding of how materials change when rapidly heated

Collaboration between the University of Southampton and the University of Cambridge has made ground-breaking advances in our understanding of the changes that materials undergo when rapidly heated. Using cutting-edge equipment and specially designed MEMs sensors on loan from Mettler-Toledo, scientists from the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronic Research Centre and the University of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science were able to probe the behavior of phase change memory materials, the semiconductors that store information in the next generation of electronics, as they were heated at rates up to 10,000 degree C per second. While it is not surprising that properties of materials change significantly when they are shrunk to nanoscale dimensions, they have devised a method of directly screening materials for improved memory performance; this means faster, smaller and less power hungry smart phones, iPods and computers are one step closer.