Thanks for the memories

From Science Daily --

A team at Rice University has determined that a strip of graphite only 10 atoms thick can serve as the basic element in a new type of memory, making massive amounts of storage available for computers, handheld media players, cell phones and cameras.

The core idea: exploiting graphene's conducting properties. According to the article, graphene-based storage expands the memory capacity in a 2-D array by a factor of five. Individual bits could be smaller than 10 nanometers. Memory could also be stacked in a 3-D array. Graphene memory puts out little heat. Best of all, it's cheap. The stuff of cyber dreams ... is the stuff of pencils.