According to POSTECH on Wednesday, Dr. Shin Young-han succeeded in figuring out the operational mechanism of ferroelectrics and published the research in the science journal Nature.

In ferroelectrics, a material is given a permanent electric polarization by the application of an electric field.

FeRAM is considered "the dream semiconductor" because it has all the merits of DRAM (can store large volumes of data), SRAM (can process data at high speed) and Flash memory (holds data when the power is turned off).

"FeRAM, which is similar to DRAM in structure, uses ferroelectrics to store an electric charge," Shin said. "I discovered why it consumes much less energy than other types of electrics by analyzing the process of data being written and deleted within ferroelectrics."

POSTECH said the discovery will greatly facilitate the development of the FeRAM technology, which can store data 10 times faster than Flash memory and keep it for longer than 10 years.

(englishnews@chosun.com )