A kilobyte rewritable atomic memory F. E. Kalff, M. P. Rebergen, E. Fahrenfort, J. Girovsky, R. Toskovic, J. L. Lado, J. Fernández-Rossier & A. F. Otte Nature Nanotechnology (2016) doi:10.1038/nnano.2016.131 Received 17 March 2016 Accepted 15 June 2016 Published online 18 July 2016 Abstract The advent of devices based on single dopants, such as the single-atom transistor1, the single-spin magnetometer2, 3 and the single-atom memory4, has motivated the quest for strategies that permit the control of matter with atomic precision. Manipulation of individual atoms by low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy5 provides ways to store data in atoms, encoded either into their charge state6, 7, magnetization state8, 9, 10 or lattice position11. A clear challenge now is the controlled integration of these individual functional atoms into extended, scalable atomic circuits. Here, we present a robust digital atomic-scale memory of up to 1 kilobyte (8,000 bits) using an array of individual surface vacancies in a chlorine-terminated Cu(100) surface. The memory can be read and rewritten automatically by means of atomic-scale markers and offers an areal density of 502 terabits per square inch, outperforming state-of-the-art hard disk drives by three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the chlorine vacancies are found to be stable at temperatures up to 77 K, offering the potential for expanding large-scale atomic assembly towards ambient conditions. http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2016.131.html
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