Physic of Switchable Moleculars Materials Team (P2MC)

          The P2MC team is conducting a fundamental physics study on Molecular Switching. The team also coordinates a CNRS Research Group on this subject at the interface of Physics and Chemistry. Molecular switching is a property of certain solids so-called "multistable" solids, presenting at the molecular level several possible states between which switching is possible, in a reversible way, under the effect of external factors that will be detailed later.

          The main purpose of molecular switching studies is the realisation of non-volatile optical memories, i.e. not requiring energy to maintain the bit of information in a given state. In principle, a bistable system can contain, at least temporarily, one bit of information. However, it seems necessary to gather a few hundred molecules in order to permanently store the information in point-to-point memories, whereas a slightly larger number would be needed for holographic memories. Whatever the type of memory chosen, the extreme smallness of the molecular dimensions should lead to memory densities much higher than current standards.