Nanotechnology
| Researchers have demonstrated how reconfigurable clusters of colloids can store data.In theory, a teaspoonful of water containing these nanoparticles could store up to a terabytes worth of data. |
Storing data, images and more in a brain-implantable liquid could one day be a reality as researchers discovered a new method of storing data in microscopic particles suspended in a solution.
Scientists at the University of Michigan have found that digital information can be stored on colloidal clusters after observing them switch between two states - such as the 0s and 1s of traditional bits - when placed in a liquid.
A research paper detailing the team's findings, entitled Digital Colloids: Reconfigurable Clusters as High Information Density Elements, was published recently in the journal Soft Matter.
In the paper, the authors write:
we anticipate that reconfigurable colloidal clusters like those we propose here may be used as distributed information storage devices in environments that break free from the limitations of silicon-based computing, permitting novel ways to perform sensing and computing in solvent-based chemical processes and biological systems, and may even provide ways to interface traditional computers with computations being performed in the bloodstream or brain"We wanted to demonstrate that it would be possible to store information in a new way that's different to traditional silicon chips by using nanoparticles," Sharon Glotzer, a chemical engineer at the University of Michigan who led the research, told IBTimes UK.
to describe how the storage works. If you imagine nanoparticles like the colours of the cube, all are attached to a central sphere that could twist and turn in different ways in order to arrange all of them.The team has also created a series of movies generated from the simulations, as well as interactive media, showing the rearrangement and transition structures for 4- to 12-clusters. A sample is included below.
“I wanted to provide every tool I could to allow another person to interact with and experience these three-dimensional clusters as I experienced them,” said Carolyn Phillips, an Argonne National Laboratory scholar in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division and first author of the paper.
"This digital colloid idea is really just the first tiny step in a new direction and a new approach to computing and high density information storage. It could make it possible for having different kinds of human computer interfaces or biologically friendly neural implants." |
In theory, a teaspoonful of water containing these nanoparticles could store up to a terabytes worth of data.
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One practical application could be simply as a sensor. Nanoparticle clusters could be introduced into the bloodstream to detect, for example, glucose levels in order to assist diabetes sufferers.
Another implementation, which could potentially be realised within a few years, would be as "passive sensors". These could replace use-by-dates on food wrappers by signaling when food is spoiled by changing color.
"This field of wet computing is so nascent, it's really at the very beginning and so this digital colloid idea is really just the first tiny step in a new direction and a new approach to computing and high density information storage," Glotzer says. "It could make it possible for having different kinds of human computer interfaces or biologically friendly neural implants."
Although Glotzer acknowledges that such ideas are purely speculative for the moment, these neural implants could potentially be used to assist the human brain in accessing additional information or calculating computational tasks without needing to touch a calculator. This would allow individuals to learn and absorb information at unprecedented rates.
"Of course, that would take all the fun out of reading books and working things out yourself," says Glotzer. "But you could learn stuff super fast."
SOURCE International Business Times
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