Today’s blog looks at some interesting new technologies and discoveries that might someday impact the communications industry.

Forever Memory. Researchers at the University of Southampton in the UK have developed a device that they believe can store data for billions of years. The new storage device uses a crystal made of nanostructured glass. The scientists jokingly call this the “superman Crystal’, in reference to the memory crystal that accompanied Superman as a baby in the journey to earth and which carried a message from Jor-El, Superman’s father.

Ultrafast femtosecond lasers are used to precisely inscribe data into nanostructured voids in the silica. Unlike normal writing on a flat surface, the encoding method takes advantage of the multiple surfaces in a crystal and inscribes data in what is described as five dimension – but which means writing on surfaces that point in five different directions. One small crystal can hold up to 360 terabytes of data. The crystals are stable under freezing conditions and in heat up to 1,000 C.

This is a permanent storage device and can’t be altered once written. This is perfect for the kinds of data that we want to store for a long time. Our current challenge is that storage devices degrade over time, meaning we’re already losing data that’s only a few decades old.

Brain-like Computer Chips. An international team of scientists have developed a neuromorphic device called a memristor that mimics the actions of brain synapses. The memristor device is composed of molecules that can change electrical properties based on the amount of electric charge that passes through them.

As the memristor molecules pivot and change, they create a multitude of memory states, much like the human brain. Memristors are analog and have been around for a while. However, earlier devices were only capable of performing low-accuracy calculations.

The new device includes a 14-bit neuromorphic accelerator, which means the device can perform high-resolution accurate calculations with an extraordinary energy efficiency of 4.1 tera-operations per second. The new devices seem to be perfect for powering AI data centers. The devices hold promise for a wide range of interesting uses. For example, a memristor could be built into smart clothing like a tee-shirt that could change the picture on demand.

Solar Power Breakthrough. Scientists at Oxford University have developed a new light-absorbing material made of perovskite that is ultra-thin and flexible enough to be applied to almost any common surface. The scientists have found that they can vastly improve the electrical output by stacking multiple layers of the material, with each layer set to maximize a specific light frequency.

Through experimentation, they have been able to deliver a 27% energy efficiency (meaning they convert 27% of light into electricity), which is better than the 22% efficiency of most existing silicon photovoltaic materials. The scientists hope to increase efficiency to as much as 45%.

The new material can be applied in a coating of only 1 micron thick, which is 150 times thinner than a normal silicon wafer. The potential for this new material is that it can be added to buildings and other surfaces and could replace the need for constructing large solar farms.