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Researchers Create Cheap, Flexible, Plastic Flash Memory
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Tokyo, led by electrical engineering professor Takao Someya, have created a new kind of low-cost, plastic, flash memory storage device. Although not as dense or stable as its silicon cousin, the plastic flash memory is useful because of its low cost, simple manufacturing process, and potential use in e-paper or other flexible devices. To demonstrate the memory, Someya's group integrated a 676-memory-cell device with a rubber pressure sensor. The flexible sensor-memory device, which is less than 700 micrometers thick, can record pressure patterns and retain them for up to a day."
This sounds like a good idea for transferring content securely. The contents of the memory will degrade in a short time, making it ideal for carrying sensitive data.
Excellent, if this wasnt vaporware, we'd be that much closer to a roll up computer...which Im sure someone could justify over the normal old boring rigid type besides the neato factor
Sounds like the ethics of your typical politician.
This ain't rocket surgery.
"Organic materials offer the capability to significantly lower the price of memory," because they can be processed much more cheaply than silicon, says Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved with the work. The demonstration of plastic flash "is a very important milestone in organic memory," says Yang.
The plastic memory was made by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by electrical engineering professor Takao Someya. The key to making the plastic memory device work, says Someya, is a hybrid insulating layer made of a polymer and a metal oxide. This layer electrically isolates the metal gate in which charges are stored. An applied voltage causes the metal gates to accumulate charge--charged and uncharged gates represents binary 1s and 0s, as in silicon flash. The better the insulator works, the longer the data can be stored before the electrons leak away and the data degrades.
Story continues below
Someya's group starts by placing metal transistor gates on top of a plastic substrate. Then a thin layer of aluminum oxide is deposited on top and the plastic film is submerged in a solution containing an insulating polymer. The polymer finally self-assembles on the surface of the aluminum oxide. The plastic devices can endure 1,000 writing and reading cycles. In contrast, silicon flash can be written to about 100,000 times.
I might be missing something; which part of the process is done with organic materials. I see that it's not silicon based, but perhaps I am misunderstanding their usage of organic. Regardless to that fact, though, it's still pretty interesting stuff.
the next virtual reality. What I mean is, back in the late 80s-90s, virtual reality was thought to be the technology of the future. Now they are out of date and instead somewhat replaced with augmented reality.
Now with e-book readers, will they get replaced with the e-paper medium. With this flexible memory card and other technology such as the printable circuit board, I can see e-book readers becoming out of date.
Tell me that you haven't heard this before?
- Flexible displays
- Flexible PCB's
- Flexible Chips
Yes, they've been around since the 80's. But have they ever been used? No!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
White House email archives.
Just think of the applications of plastic memory. Completely undetectable by the security scanners at airports, you can have your high security decryption key on you without having a USB key confiscated to see what is on it, possibly revealing your decryption key. One in the eye to the security nut-jobs who like to confiscate things to see what's on them under pretext of crime prevention / terror.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I keep hearing about awesome revolutionary inventions that are cheap, flexible, and tiny. Super efficient solar panels, screens, memory, everything.
And yet, somehow, years pass and I never see them actually used in consumer electronics.
Obviously that's not always the case. E-Ink is something I would have put into that category had it never materialized, for example. But in a general sense I just have trouble getting excited these days.
"Flash" is the name of a specific technology that stores data in the charge accumulated on the gate of a MOSFET. The term you're looking for to describe what this invention is is "EEPROM", which is the category of devices of which Flash is the best known.
Basically, your comment makes you look stupid, like people who call photocopiers "xeroxes" or vacuum cleaners "hoovers".
I keep hearing about awesome revolutionary inventions that are cheap, flexible, and tiny. Super efficient solar panels, screens, memory, everything. And yet, somehow, years pass and I never see them actually used in consumer electronics.
You're just not paying attention. Think back 10 years, and try to figure out how big a device would have had to be in order to perform the same functions as, for example, an iPhone. It would be at least 5 times as thick. Would have cost an thousands of dollars, too. 20 years ago you would have needed a backpack to cart it around in. Technology progresses in small steps, so that you tend to miss it unless you're actually paying attention. It's not until you look at old photographs or videos that you realize how much has changed.
Sounds like it has a ways to go before it catches up with Silly Putty. It's been encoding newsprint for decades, and I believe it would definitely hold the content for more than a day. I hope Rupert Murdoch doesn't get wise to this "technology".
This could potentially solve both the unemployment problem AND the DRM problem.
Just scribes to write the articles, and the company doesn't have to worry about the reader passing along copies because after a day, they'll be unreadable!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Cheap is nice. Short term memory -- too close to home for anyone over 40, but one day isn't bad. How fast is it to access, and how large is it relative to Si storage? Those may both be answered in TFA, but I'm too lazy to check. +1 Honesty?
/tmp type storage... especially if the 1 day reliability can be extended through a refresh cycle.
If this is as fast as traditional large storage formats, and it doesn't take considerably more space, it could be interesting to see this applied to swap space or
From TFA:
Ethan Miller, professor of computer science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says that plastic memory might be incorporated into e-paper. "Suppose you have a sheet with memory and a pressure sensor underneath it--you could write something and store the data, without a scanner," he says.
Yes, this is very cool. I owned the analog versions some years back:
http://elab.eserver.org/hfl0257.html
And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_paper
Now, if you think I'm taking a cheap shot - I'm not. The magic tablet and carbon paper technologies were quite significant and did shape our communications - they both broadened the writing medium.
This, now, like the things above, possibly becoming cheap enough for ubiquitous use, could have the same effect.
So - this is one case where "neener neener neener, we had that before" isn't an inaccurate catcall - it's really to say, "neener neener neener, we had that before - and we told everyone we would need it again!"
I for one hope that this doesn't become more forgotten vaporware.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Technology progresses in small steps, so that you tend to miss it unless you're actually paying attention.
I'll agree that that factors into it, yeah - but I'm not talking about the speeding up and shrinking down of technology in general. It's hard to draw the line clearly, but there are inventions that bring an all-new aspect into it (often lately it's about being flexible and made out of pocket lint so that it costs nothing / can be printed out / is biodegradeable) and that's what doesn't show.
The gradual trend of things getting smaller and faster is a different story, and one I'm pretty pleased with.
Sounds like the standard schwag at every tech conference...
I'm sure this is a useful for some applications, but at 676 bits on that large piece of plastic, this thing probably does not even rival core memory in terms of storage density. They got a lot of shrinking to do before this thing can store even one MP3 file.
Remember those tape cassettes that went the way of the dinosaurs when CD burners got cheap. They were also plastic and metal oxides. Seems we are just coming back in circles and recycling technologies at the next level.