Communications of the ACM
pgrade Your Brain: Liquid Hard Drive Implants Could Increase Intellect
Digital information storage in colloidal clusters could make biologically friendly neural implants possible.
Credit: International Business Times
University of Michigan (UM) researchers have found that digital information can be stored on colloidal clusters because they can switch between two states--such as the 1s and 0s of conventional bits--when placed in a liquid.
"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," says UM professor Sharon Glotzer.
She says the technology works like a Rubik's cube, in which nanoparticles are all attached to a central sphere that can twist and turn in different ways in order to arrange all of them. "If we could enumerate all of those different patterns--or states--and understand how you can go from one state to another, then it would be possible to encode information," Glotzer says. "The more colors you can have, the more states you can have, and the more states you can have, the more information you can store."
This type of data storage, which Glotzer calls wet computing, could employ biocompatible nanoparticles that could be used within the human body. Glotzer says the field of wet computing "could make it possible for having different kinds of human computer interfaces or biologically friendly neural implants."
From International Business Times
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