Plastic Memory 1

ABSTRACT

Plastics have long formed the skeletons and skin of products, whereas silicon has supplied the
brains. With the advent of polymer and crystalline organic electronics, plastics will make up
the brains as well as the brawn. Plastic chips may never be as fast or as miniaturized as
silicon chips, but their production by convenient techniques, including ink-jet printing,
promises extremely cheap devices that could become ubiquitous in consumer products and
household appliances. Potential uses include information displays for appliances and
computers, electronic paper, radiofrequency identification tags, wearable electronics,
chemical sensors and pressure-sensitive skin for robots.

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Plastic Memory 2
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

A conducting plastic has been used to create a new memory technology with the potential
to store a megabit of data in a millimeter-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.

Imagine a scenario where the memory stored in your digital camera or personal digital
assistant is partially based one of the most flexible materials made by man: plastic.

Scientists at HP Labs and Princeton University are excited a new memory technology
that could store more data and cost less than traditional silicon-based chips for mobile
devices such as handheld computers, cell phones and MP3 players.

But this chip is different than silicon technologies such as the popular flash memory, the
researchers said, because it's partially made of plastic in addition to a foil substrate and
some silicon. And while flash memory can be rewritten, the new technology can be
written to only once. But it can be read several times and retains data without power
because it won't require a laser or motor to read or write.

HP scientist Warren Jackson said simplifying the production of such memory chips is a
key factor because it has the potential to lower the cost of memory use on a per megabyte
basis for customers. However, this technology could potentially store more data than
flash, and perhaps even become fast enough to store video, he said.

"This has the ability to work for a slightly different market than flash because we would
now have the ability to not be able to write it a bunch of applications, but just read it so it
becomes a permanent record.," Jackson told internetnews.com.

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Plastic Memory 3
Moreover, this could be favorable to companies concerned about compliance regulations
such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley, ensuring that the integrity of data on documents is
preserved over long periods of time, the scientists said.

According to research analysts, finding alternative sources of memory has become a

popular research issue because flash memory is expected to reach serious limitations as
the dimension demands on devices increasingly get smaller to host a variety of form
factors. Smaller memory space means the transistors leak more electricity and suck up
more power.

But Gartner research analyst Richard Gordon said engineering obstacles facing memory
technologies stretch back 30-plus years and noted that just last week Intel announced a
new transistor to take care of the leakage problem.

"Flash technology is currently at a process node of the .11 micron level," Gordon said
"There is a roadmap to accommodate it for the next 10 years so it still has a long time to
go before it runs out of steam. I don't see that changing unless there is a technology in
terms of cost-per-bit and performance that blows flash out of the water."

While unique the concept of plastic or polymer-based memory is not entirely alien. Rival
chipmakers are also looking into polymer-based memory. Intel has a program to develop
Ferro-electric polymer memory. AMD recently bought Coatue, one of several companies
working on polymer memory, including Thin Film Electronics. Intel has a stake in this
Swedish company.

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Plastic Memory 4

CHAPTER 2
CONSTRUCTION OF PLASTIC MEMORY

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.

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Plastic Memory 5

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.

PEDOT, a known conductive polymer is used in antistatic coatings for photographic film
and electrical contacts on video displays. The PEDOT based memory would employ a
grid of circuits which all have connections using a PEDOT fuse. Using a high voltage,
the fuses could be selectively blown, simulating a zero, whilst functioning fuses represent
a 1 for digital data storage.

PEDOT is an unusual plastic because it conducts electricity, a property that's led to it

being used for antistatic coatings. However, a sufficiently large pulse of current changes
it permanently to an unconducting state, just like a fuse. By putting microscopic pellets of

the stuff between two grids of wires, data can be stored by blowing patterns of bits. The
memory cannot be rewritten, but can be read very fast and with low power consumption.

The biggest challenge is developing production techniques. "We are hybridising," said
the leader of the research group, Princeton professor of electrical engineering Stephen
Forrest. "We are making a device that is organic -- the plastic polymer -- and inorganic --
thin-film silicon -- at the same time."

He said that developing the invention into a commercially viable product would require
additional work on creating a large-scale manufacturing process and ensuring
compatibility with existing electronic hardware, a process that might take as little as five
years.

"This is a novel concept for us because it involves applying a lower voltage to PEDOT to
change its resistance to the conducting material," Perlov said. "This pushes it into a state
of high resistance in which we can store the digital info ones and zeros."

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Plastic Memory 6
In a technology first, neither vacuum chambers or high temperatures would be used to
make the chip, so layers could be stacked atop each other. Instead, it is an aqueous liquid
that is stored at room temperature, but no more than 100 degrees Celsius, allowing the
scientists to stack it many layers deep.

2.1 ION SNATCH

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 PSS- and 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 stabilize it, PED+ in turn grabs on to an extra
electron and also becomes neutral, converting PEDOT into an insulating polymer.

2.2. READ AND WRITE

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Plastic Memory 7
To store the memory, the researchers use the wires and the diode surrounding the PEDOT
blob to run either a high or a low current through it. This either creates an insulator or
leaves it as a conductor.

To read the memory, they run current through the top wire and measure the current in the
bottom wire. No current means the bit is a zero, and vice versa.

In their paper in Nature, the researchers describe just one such junction. But for a
memory application, the device will need many more. So the Hewlett-Packard team is
now working on building a grid of intersecting wires. In this way, they can read and write
multiple bits to one device. A grid system is commonly used in display screens to switch
individual pixels.

Polymer devices can sprayed or printed, and are therefore much cheaper than silicon
devices, which must be etched

PRINTING MACHINES

THE SMALL-MOLECULE organic semiconductors are best fabricated into devices by vapor
deposition: the compound is vaporized in a closed chamber, either evacuated or filled with an
inert gas, and allowed to condense in a film onto a substrate. This technique is similar to that
used in the manufacture of some very quotidian products, such as the coating on potato chip
bags that prevents oxygen from diffusing through the plastic.

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Plastic Memory 8
Polymers offer a number of fabrication techniques. One is spin-coating, in which a disk with
a blob of a solution containing the polymer or its precursors is spun, spreading the material
evenly across the disk. The material can then be etched by photolithographic techniques
similar to those used in making conventional inorganic semiconductors or cut or imprinted in
other ways. (Some researchers have also used spin-coating with pentacene.) One problem
with conductive polymers compared with the plastics used in other industries is their lack of
solubility in convenient organic solvents For example, polyethylenedioxythiophene, or
PEDOT, is typically laid down in an acidic water based solution whose corrosive properties
cause other problems.
In April, TDA Research in Wheat Ridge, Colo., announced a new form of PEDOT
dubbed oligotron, which is soluble in non-corrosive organic solvents. Shining ultraviolet
(UV) light on the liquid precursor causes its molecules to cross-link, curing the material into
an insoluble solid. Thus, it should be possible to spin-coat oligotron and then make a pattern
by shining UV light on it through a mask.

The raw materials for organic electronic devices come in two broad classes: small
molecules and conjugated polymer chains both of which have alternating double and single
carbon bonds. Electrons in the double bonds become somewhat delocalized, or shared among
many atoms. Consequently, the allowed states of the electrons form bands over ranges of
energy. The electrical properties of the material depend on the separation and the filling of
the bands. Generally, the polymers have a full valence band, making them insulating. When
dopant chemicals (such as sodium) are added, however, electrons contributed to the
conduction band or removed from the valence band enable a current to flow. The small
molecules are semiconducting in their undoped state.

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Plastic Memory 9

2.3 PLASTIC PLUSES

The discovery, achieved by HP (NYSE: HPQ) and Princeton researchers in Forrest's

university laboratory, came during work with a polymer material called Pedot -- a clear,
conductive plastic used as coating on photographic film and as electrical contact on video
displays.

Princeton postdoctoral researcher Steven Moller, who is now with HP, found that Pedot
conducts electricity at low voltages but permanently loses its conductivity when exposed
to higher electrical currents, making it act like a circuit breaker.

In using Pedot as a storage medium, a device would use a grid of circuits in which all of
the connections contain a Pedot fuse. With the introduction of high voltages, the fuses
would blow and represent the zeros while unblown fuses would represent the ones that
make up computerized data and digital images.

Princeton representative Steven Shultz told TechNewsWorld that researchers believe the
technology will decrease the size, increase reliability and speed up reading and writing of
memory chips.

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Plastic Memory 10

CHAPTER 3
FEATURES OF PLASTIC MEMORY

3.1 APPLICATIONS OF PLASTIC MEMORY

Thomas Fussel, chairman of Opticom (Oslo, Norway announced that a joint venture with
Intel has produced a polymer-based memory technology that can be used for permanent
non-volatile storage. This "plastic memory" was developed by a subsidiary of Opticom
called Thin Film Electronics. Note that if you visit TFE's website, the end product looks
like the photo templates used for manufacturing silicon-based products and offers a
strong potential to disrupt or replace the entire flash memory market! Yes. Intel is
currently exercising some of its rights to non-exclusive royalty bearing licenses for any
products developed using this technology and is pumping nearly US$8 million dollars in
to acquire a 13% stake in Opticom's TFE division--up from the 6% stake it already
owned--and is essentially financing its continued development. Some facts about this
technology:

#1 - Plastic memory is fast. Lab-built devices with a 1GB storage capacity have yielded
read/write cycle times that are 10 times faster than Compact Flash, which are typically 2-
10MB/s read, 1-4MB/s write.

#2 - It requires far fewer transistors, typically only 0.5M (million) for 1GB of storage (!!)
compared to silicon's 1.5-6.5B (billion).

#3 - It costs about 5% as much to manufacture compared to silicon-based memory.

#4 - It can be stacked vertically in a product, yielding 3D space usage; silicon chips can
only be set beside each other.

#5 - It has very low power consumption.

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Plastic Memory 11

#6 - The control circuitry only occupies 1-5% of total transistor area.

#7 - It maintains memory even when the power is turned off. Nothing new compared to
flash, but worth mentioning.

So far this technology has only been demonstrated in the lab, and the development team
has been working since late 1999 to achieve this milestone. It is likely that user products
won't arrive anytime soon. Still, the potential is mind boggling. I'm sure we haven't heard
the last of this technology.

Without using transistors, data is written by current passing through a polymer fuse;
when that fuse blows it changes its conductivity, effectively setting that bit on or off. Not
requiring expensive processing or lithography, the ability to produce plastic memory
outside of a clean room, and the fact that it can hold more data than a DVD without the
power consumption of a laser all add up to a very viable technology. There are still
hurdles to clear, such as improving speed enough to be used for video, but considerable
strides have been made, including working reproducible samples that add credence to the
design.

In a technology first, neither vacuum chambers or high temperatures would be used to

make the chip, so layers could be stacked atop each other. Instead, it is an aqueous liquid
that is stored at room temperature, but no more than 100 degrees Celsius, allowing the
scientists to stack it many layers deep.

"What is going to help us compete with the rewriteable memories is that we can make
this very inexpensively," Perlov said. "As opposed to flash where we use the silicon
wafer in a batch process to make devices, we're using the silicon wafer as a substrate
where we put one layer at a time."

HP scientist Warren Jackson said simplifying the production of such memory chips is a
key factor because it has the potential to lower the cost of memory use on a per megabyte
basis for customers. However, this technology could potentially store more data than
flash, and perhaps even become fast enough to store video, he said.
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Plastic Memory 12

"This has the ability to work for a slightly different market than flash because we would
now have the ability to not be able to write it a bunch of applications, but just read it so it
becomes a permanent record.," Jackson told internetnews.com.

According to research analysts, finding alternative sources of memory has become a

popular research issue because flash memory is expected to reach serious limitations as
the dimension demands on devices increasingly get smaller to host a variety of form
factors. Smaller memory space means the transistors leak more electricity and suck up
more power.

But Gartner research analyst Richard Gordon said engineering obstacles facing memory
technologies stretch back 30-plus years and noted that just last week Intel announced a
new transistor to take care of the leakage problem.

"Flash technology is currently at a process node of the .11 micron level," Gordon said
"There is a roadmap to accommodate it for the next 10 years so it still has a long time to
go before it runs out of steam. I don't see that changing unless there is a technology in
terms of cost-per-bit and performance that blows flash out of the water."

While unique the concept of plastic, or polymer-based memory is not entirely alien. Rival
chipmakers are also looking into polymer-based memory. Intel has a program to develop
ferro-electric polymer memory. AMD recently bought Coatue, one of several companies
working on polymer memory, including Thin Film Electronics. Intel has a stake in this
Swedish company.

The memory stored in your digital camera or personal digital assistant is partially based
one of the most flexible materials made by man: plastic. Moreover, this could be
favorable to companies concerned about compliance regulations such as HIPAA and
Sarbanes-Oxley, ensuring that the integrity of data on documents is preserved over long
periods of time, the scientists said. While unique the concept of plastic, or polymer-based
memory is not entirely alien. Rival chipmakers are also looking into polymer-based
memory.

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Plastic Memory 13

Other companies are also investigating organic, plastic memories. Intel has invested in
ovonics, which uses the same material as CD-RW disks, as an alternative to
reprogrammable flash memory. Originally bullish about its prospects, production
difficulties have led the company to talk about a five-year timeline to shipping parts: it is
also working with Thin Film Technologies of Sweden on a different polymer technology.
Another company, Coatue, was absorbed into AMD before becoming part of a joint effort
between AMD and Fujitsu for plastic memory development, FASL.

For music or photographs, it's actually an advantage to have something you can't
rewrite," said Warren Jackson, one of the paper's co-authors and scientist at HP Labs.
"Even in accounting, it would be quite useful if you have a trail of files that you can't
erase."

It is used to produce an inexpensive,high capacity write once read many memory

technology that looks like a promising replacement for flash memory technology in some
applications.It can be used as a coating on photographic film and as electrical contact on
video diplays.It can store data like CD but it can be used as a conventional electronic
memory chip.

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Plastic Memory 14

CHAPTER 4
PLASTIC COMPUTER MEMORY ADVANCES

Making a digital memory device means finding a way to represent the ones and zeros of
computer logic, devising a relatively convenient way to retrieve these binary patterns
from storage, and making sure the information remains stable.

Digital memory is an essential component of many electronic devices, and memory that
takes up little space and electricity is in high demand as electronic devices continue to
shrink.

Researchers from the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science and the Italian
National Research Council have approach the problem by taking the one-word advice
given to Dustin Hoffman's character The Graduate: plastics. They used positive and
negative electric charges, or space charges, contained within plastic to store binary
numbers.

A polymer retains space charges near a metal interface when there is a bias, or electrical
current, running across the surface. These charges come either from electrons, which are
negatively charged, or the positively-charged holes vacated by electrons. "We can store
space charges in a polymer layer, and conveniently check the presence of the space
charges to... know the state of the polymer layer," said Amlan Pal, a reader at the Indian
Association for the Cultivation of Science.

Space charges are essentially differences in electrical charge in a given region. They can
be read using an electrical pulse because they change the way the device conducts
electricity

The researchers made the storage device by spreading a 50-nanometer layer of the
polymer regioregularpoly on glass, then topping it with an aluminum electrode. To write
a space charge to the device, they applied a positive 20-second, 3-volt pulse. To read the

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Plastic Memory 15
state, they used a 0.2-volt, one minute pulse. Any kind of negative electrical pulse erased
this high state, or charge, replacing it with the default low state.

The space charges remain stable for about an hour, according to Pal. They can also be
refreshed by another 3-volt positive pulse. The researchers intend to increase the memory
retention ability of their device beyond an hour.

ELECTRONIC PAPER produced by Philips has a resolution of 85 pixels per inch and can be
rolled up into a cylinder four centimeters in diameter. The paper uses pentacene thin-film
transistors that are manufactured at room temperature from a liquid solution. The transistors
operate fast enough to display video.

The researchers are also working on showing that organic semi conducting dye molecules
can be used as space-charge memory devices. "We aim to [be able to] read the state of...
devices based on both conjugated polymers and organic dyes," said Pal. They're working
toward being able to read the dye molecule state by measuring changes in
photoluminescence, which would make it easier to read the data, according to Pal.

Pal's research colleagues were Himadri S. Majumdar and Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the
Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, and Alberto Bolognesi of the Italian
National Research Counsel (CNR). They published the research in the February 15, 2002
issue of the Journal of Applied Physics. The research was funded by the Indian

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Plastic Memory 16
Association for the Cultivation of Science, an autonomous institute financed by the
Indian Department of Science and Technology.

PRESSURE-SENSITIVE “SKIN” could give robots a sense of touch. Developed by Takao

Someya and his co-workers at the University of Tokyo, each sensor is about three millimeters
square. Individual square patches of sensors can be linked up to cover larger areas simply by
taping them together with their electrodes aligned. The transistors controlling the sensors are
made of pentacene.

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Plastic Memory 17

CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION

A revolutionary new memory technology suitable for archiving data has been unveiled.
The technology used, combines organic and inorganic materials to produce a device that
combines the characteristics of a CD and conventional memory chip. It bears similarities
to CD’s in that when data is written to it, it undergoes permanent physical change,
however unlike a CD it does not use a laser to write the information. Similarly to a
memory chip, it plugs directly into an electronic circuit and has no memory parts.

Findings indicate that 1 million bits of information could be stored in a square millimeter
of paper thin material. Similarly a gigabit of information could be stored in a 1cm cube.
The new memory technology promises to store more data at less cost than the expense to
build chips used by popular consumer gadgets.

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Plastic Memory 18

REFERENCES

1. www.internetnews.com
2. www.Greek.com
3. www.CNN.com
4. Plastic Electronics. Dago de Leeuw in Physics World, Vol. 12, No. 3, pages
31–34; March 1999.

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