16. Characteristics and Applications of Advanced Ceramic Materials
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In particular, three axis MEMS gyroscopes are used as digital compasses in the latest cellular phones such as I-phones, and this last application is expected to boost the sales of MEMS devices to over 6 billion by 2015 representing some $10 Bn.
Memristors are the latest nanoscale memory devices based on semiconducting ceramics. The first of these devices made by Hewlett Packard was made of a 15 nanometre (nm) thick semiconducting titanium dioxide film with top and bottom titanium/platinum electrodes approximately 10 nm thick. Memristors have the potential of being 100 times smaller than present technology, and have characteristics that might permit computers to operate in a similar way to the human brain. HP estimates that within 10 years this technology will enable a single chip of a trillion bytes of storage to be manufactured.
There is great scope in the future for thin film ceramics in the nanotechnology evolution, where sensors and actuators using ferroelectrics can be readily integrated onto semiconductor chips using nanoscale fabrication methods.