Magical BEANs: New Nano-Sized Particles Could Provide Mega-Sized Data Storage

This schematic shows enthalpy curves sketched for the liquid, crystalline and amorphous phases of a new class of nanomaterials called "BEANs" for Binary Eutectic-Alloy Nanostructures. (Credit: Image courtesy of Daryl Chrzan)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2010) — The ability of phase-change materials to readily and swiftly transition between different phases has made them valuable as a low-power source of non-volatile or "flash" memory and data storage. Now an entire new class of phase-change materials has been discovered by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley that could be applied to phase change random access memory (PCM) technologies and possibly optical data storage as well. The new phase-change materials -- nanocrystal alloys of a metal and semiconductor -- are called "BEANs," for binary eutectic-alloy nanostructures.

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