A Tiny Sliding Memory Device Makes Its States Easier to Read

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have strengthened the electrical signal from a memory device made of two atomically thin layers. A small sideways shift changes the state that stores information; carefully chosen contacts make the two states easier to tell apart.

The work addresses a practical obstacle for an emerging kind of electronic memory. A device can hold a state, but a computer also needs to read it reliably. The team reports a large resistance contrast at room temperature in laboratory devices using molybdenum disulfide, a material made from molybdenum and sulfur.

The university described the research on November 10, following publication in ACS Nano on October 20. PhD students Haolin You and Chen Shao led the work under electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Ying Wang. The team has fabricated and tested a few dozen devices, according to the university.

A shift between layers

Sliding the layers changes their polarization—the direction in which positive and negative charge are separated. That gives the material two electrical states that can represent stored information.

“Imagine you have two pieces of paper, and they can slide from one polarization to another,” Wang said in the university announcement.

The device is a ferroelectric tunnel junction: an exceptionally thin barrier between conducting contacts. Electrons can cross the barrier through quantum tunneling. Reversing the polarization changes how readily they cross, giving the two states different resistances.

The researchers report strong resistance contrast, known as tunneling electroresistance, in their planar devices. Their explanation connects the strong signal to changes in both the barrier's height and the width of a charge-depleted region at an interface. The measurements also show that local strain changes the contrast, making uniform fabrication a concern.

Gold and heavily doped silicon provided the contacts used to strengthen the readout, the university says. The next work includes making larger batches on wafers and connecting devices to examine how they affect one another. Those tests will help establish whether the small laboratory elements can become useful memory arrays for computing systems that bring storage closer to processing.

Primary sources

• ACS Nano research paper, published October 20, 2026

• ACS-hosted research abstract and supporting-information record

• UW–Madison announcement, November 10, 2026; source of Ying Wang's quotation