In light of Samsung Electronics’ announcement of its plans to commercialize mobile handsets with flexible displays by 2012, many researchers are currently striving to develop new flexible electronic components capable of being folded or rolled up like paper. Professor Keon Jae Lee of the Department of Material Science and Engineering announced on November 8 that he and his research team have developed a new kind of non-volatile flexible memory.
Memory is a key component of all electronic devices and is utilized in performing many core functions such as external communication, recording of data and calculations. Therefore, the development of flexible memory is paramount to the development of flexible electronic devices. While a number of flexible materials have been reported as having the potential to be used as memory, none of them have been able to overcome the interference between the countless individual memory cells, thus failing to become commercialized. In order to overcome such obstacles, a high-performance switching device is needed to directly control the state of the memory. However, difficulty in constructing high-performance semiconductors on a flexible board has, until now, stunted the development of flexible memory.
To successfully develop a non-volatile flexible memory, Professor Lee utilized memristors, a device that can remember the direction and the amount of current flowing through it even after power has been cut off. Memristors are said to be as much as one hundred times faster than the conventional flash memory and are currently being heralded as the next generation material for memory production. The new memory developed by Professor Lee is capable of controlling each memory cell without interference between neighboring cells. This new memory will, according to Professor Lee, “play a major role in the development of new flexible computers which can bend freely and can be placed anywhere.”
Details on this new memory have been published in the October issue of Nano Letters online, and the technology is currently pending for domestic and international patents.