A conducting plastic has been used to create a new memory technology
with the potential to store a megabit of data in a millimetre-square device - 10 times denser than current magnetic memories. The device should also be cheap and fast, but cannot be rewritten, so would only be suitable for permanent storage. The device sandwiches a blob of a conducting polymer called PEDOT and a silicon diode between two perpendicular wires. Substantial research effort has focused on polymer-based transistors, which could form cheap, flexible circuits, but polymer-based memory has received relatively little attention. The key to the new technology was the discovery by researchers from Princeton University, New Jersey, and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, that passing a high current through PEDOT turns it into an insulator, rather like blowing a fuse. The polymers two possible states, conductor or insulator, then form the one and zero necessary to store digital data. "The beauty of the device is that it combines the best of silicon technology - diodes - with the capability to form a fuse, which does not exist in silicon," says Vladimir Bulovic, who works on organic electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, turning the polymer INTO an insulator involves a permanent chemical change, meaning the memory can only be written to once. Its creators say this makes it ideal for archiving images and other data directly from a digital camera, cellphone or PDA, like an electronic version of film negatives.
INTRODUCTION OF PEDOT:
PEDOT's ability to conduct electricity means it is already used widely as the anti-static coating on camera film. But until now, no one suspected that it could be converted into an insulator. The material is a blend of a negatively-charged polymer called PSSand a positively-charged one called PEDT+. Having distinct, charged components allows it to conduct electricity and means that it is water soluble. The team is not sure why it stops conducting when high currents pass through. But Princeton researcher Stephen Forrest suspects that the heat produced by a high current gives the PSS- layer sufficient energy to snatch a positively-charged hydrogen ion from any water that has dissolved on its surface, forming a neutral PSSH. Without the negatively-charged PSS- to stabilise it, PED+ in turn grabs on to an extra electron and also becomes neutral, converting PEDOT into an insulating polymer.
The team predicts that one million bits of information could fit into a square millimeter of material the thickness of a sheet of paper. A block just a cubic centimeter in size could contain as many as 1,000 high-quality digital images, the scientists suggest, and producing it wouldn't require high-temperatures or vacuum chambers.
Top: Conceptual view of a working device. Application of an electrical voltage to an individual element blows-out the small polymer fuse, creating a 0. Re-polling of the device records which columns are 1s and which are 0s. Hence a simple but effective memory is created. Bottom: Schematic of the memory element used in this study, employing an Aluminum coated, flexible stainless steel substrate. Also shown is the chemical structural
Formula of the plastic polymer, PEDOT. .
Fig 1A) Write Read Erase cycle. A -6V pulse is applied to bring the memory in its written state. Subsequently the memory is read at -0.5V. Further a +6V pulse is applied to erase to memory.
Fig 1B) A schematic overview of a memory cell
A two-terminal device in which an organic semiconducting polymer is sandwiched between two electrodes, indium doped tin oxide (ITO) and aluminum. The experimental devices contain two polymer layers. The first layer consist of PEDOT:PSS to which an inorganic salt (e.g. lithium triflate) and plasticizer (ethylene carbonate, EC) have been added. The second layer consists of poly(3- hexylthiophene) (P3HT) doped with the plasticizer. Motion of the ions present in the device under influence of an electric field is expected to induce switching between a high and a low conduction state, the so called ON and OFF state of a memory device.