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Wednesday, 19th December 2007 (4743 views)

Researchers at Taiwan's National Chung Hsing University have used gold nanoparticles to produce a non-volatile organic memory (NVM) device.

In partnership working with the Industrial Technology Research Institute, researchers made the NVM device stable using the nanoparticles mixed with a polymer, reports Solid State Technology.

The discovery comes at a time when a number of plastic and carbon-based NVM devices have been in production after it was found that organic memory devices broke down following many read-write cycles.

However, the new device uses the gold nanoparticle-polymer mix which produces very little current in a dormant state.

The gold nanoparticles act to stabilise the organic memory as well as helping it manage up to 1,000 switches.

Rather than joining together, the nanoparticles are connected to polymer chains that "act as fingers that get entangled with the host polymer," said Professor Zingway Pei, a researcher involved in the study.

The National Chung Hsing University started life as the Advanced Academy of Agronomy and Forestry, founded by the Japanese in Taipei in 1919

 

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