Ferroelectrics and computer storage

Some of the known ferroelectric materials are described together with those properties which are of immediate interest to the designer of a computer memory. The experimental techniques used to investigate the switching process in single crystals of ferroelectric materials are reviewed and some information on the new material triglycine sulphate is presented. The results of these observations are used to describe the physical mechanism of the polarization reversal process. It is then shown that this mechanism is such that single crystals are inherently unreliable as storage devices unless periodic regeneration of the stored information is used. A memory device using optical read-out is then described.