Amid a surge in data storage demand driven by the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, Samsung Electronics has developed a technology capable of reducing power consumption by up to 96% compared to conventional NAND flash.
A research team of 34 members from Samsung Electronics SAIT (formerly the Comprehensive Technology Institute) and the Semiconductor Research Lab announced the implementation of a NAND flash structure combining ferroelectric materials and oxide semiconductors. The findings were published in the international academic journal *Nature* on the 27th.
Conventional NAND flash stores data by injecting electrons into cells. To increase storage capacity, the number of cells—or the number of stacked layers—must be raised. However, higher stacking leads to increased power consumption during read/write operations, posing a limitation.
The Samsung research team found a solution in the properties of ferroelectric materials and oxide semiconductors. Ferroelectric materials maintain internal polarization even after external voltage is removed. This allows the threshold voltage required to turn on a transistor to be lowered to near zero while stably storing bits. The technology demonstrated the potential to reduce power consumption by up to 96% in the string structure compared to existing NAND flash. It also achieved a high storage density of 5 bits per cell, the current industry maximum, while lowering power consumption.
As AI technology expands, the role of storage systems—required to store and process growing volumes of data—is becoming increasingly critical. Data centers are seeing rising demand for high-capacity SSDs capable of reliably storing training data and model state information. Consumer devices like smartphones and PCs are also evolving to perform storage, learning, and inference simultaneously due to enhanced on-device AI capabilities.
According to TrendForce, Samsung Electronics’ NAND flash sales in the second quarter of 2025 increased by 23.8% quarter-on-quarter to approximately 5.2 billion dollars (about 7.6 trillion Korean won), securing a 32.9% market share and maintaining the top position. Samsung stated, “Once commercialized, this technology is expected to significantly enhance power efficiency across diverse applications, from large-scale AI data centers to mobile and edge AI systems.”
