Development of flexible flash memory for wearable, smart electronic paper by Prof. Seunghyup Yoo's research team

Professor Yoo’s lab has developed a organic-based flash memory that is, flexible and has excellent performance.

Flash memory is an essential element for information storage in most IT devices such as tablets, smart phones, and USB drives. To make wearable and flexible smart devices, it is important to have very good flexibility in the memory you get into your device. However, because of material constraints, the implementation of flexible flash memory with flexibility and performance was impossible.

In order to solve the problem, the team used ‘initiated chemical vapor deposition (iCVD)’ to fabricate a group of high performance polymer insulating films with flexible and excellent insulating properties. And it is designed to enable optimal flash memory operation. The team’s flash memory has a programming voltage of less than 10V and a data retention time of more than 10 years, while maintaining the memory performance at 2.8% mechanical strain. This is a significant improvement over the existing inorganic insulation layer based flash memory that allowed only 1% strain.

The team demonstrated foldable memory by fabricating the developed flash memory on a 6-micrometer-thick plastic film. The team also succeeded in producing it on a printing paper, which can be used in disposable smart electronic products such as electronic paper and electronic business card. This technology is expected to contribute to the development of wearable electronic devices and smart electronic paper in earnest.

The paper was published online in the September 28 issue of Nature Communications and was reported to a number of domestic media.

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• Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00805-z

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