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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.
Sounds like the ethics of your typical politician.
This ain't rocket surgery.
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 Now they are out of date and instead somewhat replaced with augmented reality.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this flexible memory card and other technology such as the printable circuit board, I can see e-book readers becoming out of date.
"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.
Plastic, which is a polymer, is usually made from oil - which is organic. Some plastic is made from vegetable matter, which is also organic.
...carrier dead.....
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.
I think they refer to organic as in compounds containing carbon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
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.
I think you are confusing organic food with the true meaning of organic, comes from life. Oil is organic as it is fossilized remains of things that lived many years ago. Last I checked Uranium is not organic. Think organic chemistry, not organic hippies.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Its a scientific term referring to the compounds used. Given the speaker, audience, and context it makes perfect sense. Not everything has to be co-opted by marketing bullshit.
Any of them dealing with materials that contain carbon.
Try not to offend the guy, I'd hate to have to grab him a kleenex.
Err.. OK, now I've RTFA it seams this _is_ flash memory. The summary is misleading in suggesting that pressure is used in the storage; the prototype was used with a pressure sensor to provide an example application.
I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to take the "green" trend and apply it to something not at all meant for the label. Oil is organic in the same way uranium is organic. Yes, technically they both come from the natural world, but they hardly match the renewable/healthy/eco-friendly definition that the term organic has come to mean today. If PR folks keep following this logic, we'll soon be seeing ads for 90% organic cars and other such nonsense.
Uranium is a metallic element, mined as a mineral - and not organic in any sense of the word.
Oil, or petroleum is decomposed plant and animal matter, organic sources and still organic in nature.
The subject of the chemistry of polymers and oil based substances (as well material sourced from anything that was once alive) is Organic Chemistry.
Organic in chemistry generally refers to anything that is or was alive. In other subjects, organic is used to describe things that are natural and not "manufactured".
The commercial term Organic - as used for produce, does not refer to the crops themselves, it refers to the method of growing them, which does not employ industrially derived fertilizers or pesticides, and using manure, etc as fertilizers.
In actuality the term is misleading, since most of the industrial fertilizers and pesticides are produced from organic sources, and minerals, which can be used to enrich organic crops, are inorganic substances.
...carrier dead.....
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.
having a decent-sized keyboard on a portable device you can stuff in your backpack? i know it'd be great. no more lugging around huge laptop cases, a simple cylinder you can tuck somewhere will do.
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".
They already make roll-up portable keyboards. And what does a roll-up keyboard have to do with flash memory?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Buy after refining the raw petroleum, is it still organic then? Pretty sure you can't make plastic out of unprocessed crude oil.
"But this one goes to 11!"
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!
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.
In terms of chemistry, organic refers to stuff made from carbon.
Plastic is made from carbon.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Your mistake has nothing to do with the summary and everything with you trying to feel superior by correcting people.
In other words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7zfnbdyAW8
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think you are confusing organic food with the true meaning of organic, comes from life. Oil is organic as it is fossilized remains of things that lived many years ago. Last I checked Uranium is not organic. Think organic chemistry, not organic hippies.
Organic chemistry has nothing to do with life. It has to do with carbon compounds - which just so happen to appear in living things.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
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.
"EEPROM" is generally only used to refer to nonvolatile memories where individual bits can be erased. Flash memory has to be erased an entire block at a time (where a block is some size much larger than 1 bit).
Sounds like the standard schwag at every tech conference...
I think they refer to organic as in compounds containing carbon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound
<pedant>CO2 is not organic.</pedant>
$ make available
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.
good point.. although i like the screen to be a decent size too. a roll-up laptop would be awesome and i've been hoping for something like this for a while.
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.
"Organic Chemistry is a discipline within chemistry that involves the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation (by synthesis or by other means) of hydrocarbons and their derivatives."
It doesn't have to have anything to do with life. For example, a chemist studying carbon compounds from an asteroid would be doing organic chemistry even if there is no life involved.
D'oh! Make that "compounds containing carbon that are considered organic, and not compounds containing carbon that are considered inorganic"
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"