Researchers have made advances in understanding a material that could be key to the next generation of computers, more powerful than today’s silicon-based machines.

“…if you think about those two phases as being analogous to a zero and a one, you can come up with some interesting new ways of information processing.”

The existing paradigm of silicon-based computing has given us a range of amazing technologies, but engineers are starting to discover silicon’s limits. As a result, for computer science to keep advancing it is important to explore alternative materials that could enable different ways to do computation, according to Patrick J. Shamberger, assistant professor in the department of materials science and engineering at Texas A&M University. Vanadium dioxide is one example.

“It’s a very interesting, chameleon-like material that can easily switch between two different phases, from being an insulator to being a conductor, as you heat and cool it or apply a voltage,” says Sarbajit Banerjee, professor with joint appointments in the chemistry and materials science and engineering departments. “And if you think about those two phases as being analogous to a zero and a one, you can come up with some interesting new ways of information processing.”

“Before vanadium dioxide can be used in computing, we need to better control its transition from insulator to conductor and back again,” Shamberger says. In a new paper in the journal of Chemistry of Materials, the team describes doing just that by adding tungsten to the material.

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