Weve been experimenting with flexible electronics for years now (with products such as e-Paper), but never anything with a decent amount of power, storage, or durability. A Tokyo University, however, recently announced their development of a type of flexible organic storage.
Comprised of completely organic materials, this new form of storage uses floating-gate transistors for memory retention, just like traditional flash storage devices. If its one-day retention limitation can be exceeded, this new technology could open up huge doors in our path to mobility a few of which CNETs David Rosenberg outlines briefly:
There are a broad range of places where non-linear, flexible technologies could make sense. Consider the possibility of wearable storage that conforms to a body shape for video capture, or the ability to use rounded objects as storage devices. This also opens the door for all kinds of practical and nefarious uses–monitoring tire pressure or capturing the data from someone’s shoe to find out where they’ve been.
If this technology should progress at the exponential level weve seen in traditional hard drives and processors, it could very well be ready for consumer adoption in the next few years. The implications of something like this are virtually endless.
Source: [TechOn]