US Patent 7489537 - Optical nanoelectronic memory array

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7489537.html

There has been a good amount of work by researchers at HP labs and elsewhere over the past decade in producing reconfigurable electronics systems as a next step after Moore's Law. So far most of these efforts have been directed to reconfigurable logic but another area which may benefit is reconfigurable analog electronics. This patent from Bao Tran teaches a memory formed from optical nanoelements to achieve such reconfigurable analog electronics. Claim 1 reads:

1. A memory device, comprising:

an array of memory cells disposed in rows and columns and constructed over a substrate, each memory cell comprising a first signal electrode, a second signal electrode, and a nano-layer disposed in the intersecting region between the first signal electrode and the second signal electrode;

a plurality of word lines each connecting the first signal electrodes of a row of memory cells; and

a plurality of bit lines each connecting the second signal electrodes of a column of memory cells, wherein the nano-layer comprises optical nano elements.