Organic Sheets hold gigbytes

Scientists at Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard are working on a new type of memory that is small, dense and cheap. It is based on polyethylenedioxythiophene, or Pedot for short. By placing a layer of the organic compound Pedot over a thin film inorganic silicon, it can hold about a million bits of information in a square millimeter.

It works like a sheet of many small fuses. To “write” to this memory, send a high current through the Pedot, which makes it inconductive. To read it later, send a small current through, and see if it has been blown earlier, which can be interpreted as the 1’s and 0’s of binary data. Of course, it can only be written once, but can be read many times.

These could be used as a small, inexpensive, write-once memory for digital cameras, or read-only information in PDA’s (like GPS maps). It could be used for archival backup, or even to write security logs, making it impossible for hackers to cover their tracks.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here