Modern electronics power everything from smartphones to satellites, but they all share a major limitation. Heat. Once temperatures climb above roughly 200 degrees Celsius, most devices begin to break down. For decades, this thermal barrier has been one of the toughest challenges in engineering.
Researchers at the University of Southern California now believe they have found a way past that limit.
In a study published on March 26, 2026 in Science, a team led by Joshua Yang, Arthur B. Freeman Chair Professor at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the USC School of Advanced Computing, unveiled a new type of memory device that continues to operate at 700 degrees Celsius (~1300 degrees Fahrenheit). That temperature exceeds molten lava and goes far beyond anything previously achieved for this class of technology. The device showed no sign of failure. In fact, 700 degrees was simply the maximum their equipment could test.
"You may call it a revolution," Yang said. "It is the best high-temperature memory ever demonstrated."
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