Jell-O-Like Material Promises Soft Data Storage

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The words “memory” and “Jell-O” usually don’t go together, especially when talking about data storage.

But that’s the analogy North Carolina State University researchers are using to describe their soft, rubbery proof-of-concept memory device.

Why make soft memory? So it can become more like a part of your body than the cold hard silicon chips that store data in your computer could ever hope to be. The Jell-O-like memory could lead to new types of medical devices and biological sensors

“There is a physical and electrical disconnect between the world of electronics and the world of biology,” said Michael Dickey, a professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at North Carolina State University.

Dickey and his team are trying to bridge this gap with hydrogels: soft materials that are compatible with biological cells. Like sponges, hydrogels trap liquids like water.

Unlike sponges, hydrogels hold onto their fluids and form rubbery or gelatinous materials. Hydrogels are used for breast implants, treatment of prostate cancer and eye surgery.

The researchers embedded wires made of liquid metal — an alloy of gallium and indium — inside a hydrogel. The device stores a bit of data where wires cross.

The challenge was figuring out how to make the intersections reliably change between a physical state that could represent a “0” and one that could represent a “1.”

The answer was to change the hydrogel’s level of acidity, or pH, while jolting the wires with electricity. This causes the wire surface to oxidize where the wires cross. The oxide layer makes it more difficult for electricity to pass through.

Changing the pH back and jolting the wire again removes the oxide layer, allowing electricity to pass through easily. These two different states represent, respectively, the 1’s and 0’s that make up computer data.

The proof-of-concept memory device holds just four bits of data in a blob of hydrogel that fills the palm of your hand. With more research the device will store more data in smaller spaces, but isn’t likely to challenge traditional storage devices, which fit billions of bits per square centimeter.

“The data density will be low and limited by the size of the electrodes we can produce,” said Dickey.

However, a flexible, biocompatible memory device doesn’t have to hold reams of data to be useful. The hydrogel memory opens new data storage possibilities simply by being able to go where no traditional electronics can safely go, like wet environments or places that get bent or compressed, said Dickey.

The most intriguing possibilities have to do with linking the biological and the electronic.

Imagine a device embedded in your body that can report to the outside world how your organs are functioning in real time.

Eric Smalley has written about technology for more than two decades. His freelance credits include Discover, Scientific American, Wired News and CNet. He edits Technology Research News.

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