One of the barriers the research scientists have had some success in vaulting with ferroelectric storage is a depolarizing field that has been a source for instability in the vanishingly thin wires.

"Because we've been able to write to and read from a bit that is essentially within a three-nanometer diameter wire, this means that if one could pack wires together ... in rows, it implies an immense capacity for storage," Spanier said.

At this point, Spanier said that "it's certainly not worked out what the [storage] device would look like."

The Argonne National Laboratory, one of the U.S. Department of Energy's largest research centers, has conducted its own research on ferroelectric storage that resulted in findings similar to those by Spanier and his colleagues.

"We don't have a clear plan that I can discuss [for product], although we've been discussing [this] with some manufacturers. This is early-stage research. How it would look, would it be with nanowire, would it be with films? How would we be able to manipulate the molecules, [that] is not clear yet," Spanier said.