Thanks to the latest research published in the Nature Communications journal, lightweight and inexpensive electronic gadgets, made of flexible plastic instead of silicon chips, have inched another step closer to reality.
The paper submitted by researchers from the University of Iowa in collaboration with those from New York University have devised an alternative to transfer information from the currently used magnetic storage devices to such plastic material efficiently.
Michael Flatté, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and director of the UI Optical Science and Technology Center, said that converting the information from one type to another was very critical to develop gadgets that satisfied the need for them to be inexpensive and lightweight.
Though it might be cheap and easier to encode information for Fiber Optic transmission,storage is most efficient when done using magnetism, that is how information can remain forever without any additional power.
Unlike silicon chip based computers the energy cost for converting information from one form to another in flexible plastic computing devices is very high. What Flatté and his colleagues did was to successfully accomplish information transfer between a magnet and an organic light-emitting diode at room temperature and without electrical current flow between the magnet and the organic device.
“The magnetic fields from the magnetic storage device directly modify the light emission from the device. This could help solve problems of storage and communication for new types of inexpensive, low-power computers based on conducting plastics,” says professor Markus Wohlgenannt, also of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Optical Science and Technology Center.
Professor Andrew Kent of New York University notes that while these studies were conducted on relatively large devices, miniaturized devices would operate on the same principles and enable new types of high capacity storage technologies.
With research still going on about the development of devices that are all the more cheaper and would feel like a feather on our hands, this new technology will help in the information transfer and storage part of it.