HP, Princeton Develop New Memory Material

An anonymous reader writes "Hewlett-Packard and Princeton researchers say they've developed a hybrid material that could be used for super-compact electronic memory, making the CD, DVD and similar media seem enormous and clunky by comparison. As reported by Science Blog, 'The researchers achieved the result by discovering a previously unrecognized property of a commonly used conductive polymer plastic coating. Their memory device combines this polymer, which is inexpensive and easy to produce, with very thin-film, silicon-based electronics.'"

Comments

Although they're calling this memory

[Sheetrock]

You can only write to this stuff once. Real memory is rewritable, like CD-RWs -- it'd probably be better to call this Plastic ROM or something similar.

Re:Although they're calling this memory

[pete-classic]

No, real memory holds data. This tech seems to fill that requirement.

ROM
WORM
RAM

Look 'em up.

-Peter

Mirror

[mskfisher]

Site's kinda slow, here's a mirror if need be:

http://www.mskf.org/mirrors/science_blog/

Here's another article on it

[TigerTime]

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_837803.html?m enu=news.latestheadlines

A long way

[kiick]

Chemistry is not a science in the same sense as physics. There are general rules for chemical reactions, but when you get right down to it, chemistry is not predictive. It consists of a bunch of recipies telling you how to make stuff, and a catalog of what happens when you mix various things together.

Given even the most complete description of the molecular structure of a substance, down to the individual atoms and their positions, you can't use chemistry to predict the most basic properties of the substance.
such as:

• what color is it?
  
• What's the melting point? boiling point?
  
• is it a conductor, insulator or semiconductor?
  
• Is it stable at room temperature?
  

and so on.

What you are asking about is even harder: given
a list of properties, come up with a substance
that has them, and a way to make it. That is so far beyond what chemistry can do that it is probably not even chemistry any more.

$0.02.

Re:CD technology

[Qeantk]

See, they SPIN around in the reader.... Round is actually the best shape for them. Anything else would be wasteful of space. Circle fits the most area into the smallest diameter.

Re:CD technology

[bill_mcgonigle]

See, they SPIN around in the reader....

And the parent poster was saying they didn't need to spin. What are you getting at?

The idea is that the CD stays still, and you run a beam across its surface with a solid-state steering system. No mechanical moving parts (some electrically sensitive mirrors/prisms deform w/ current to steer the beam).

So, the round shape loses data density. Look at the CD when you put it into the jewel case - all the grey plastic you still see around it could be data storage, if the thing didn't have to spin.

It would make this damn PC a lot quieter too...

Re:CD technology

[bill_mcgonigle]

Spinning is MUCH faster than moving the laser around in more dimensions.

I'm sure you know, but just in case, they're moving the laser light around, not the laser emmitter.

Another reasons we don't have holographic memory yet is it is SLOW to move the laser around.

The ones using grids of digital micromirror devices are running over 1Gb/s - that's good enough for simple CD replacement. Of course, cost is still an issue, but that tends to work itself out over time.