When The Chips Are Down (in size, but up in storage)

My husband writes for a music Web site, so I was surprised when he informed me that he had just written a post about some very big (or should I say, very tiny) technology news that I had not seen on any of the usual tech sites I peruse.

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have used nanotechnology to exponentially expand chip capacity (and even eliminate the need for silicon) for MP3 players, without increasing the size of the device itself.

"Professor Lee Cronin and Dr. Malcolm Kadodwala's work would see 500,000 gigabytes squeezed onto one square inch. The researchers believe that their development could see the number of transistors per chip rising from today's limit of 200 million to well over one billion," according to a press release on the University's Web site.

"We have been able to assemble a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device," said Cronin.
 
 "By taking these nano-scale clusters, just a nanometer in size, and placing them onto a gold or carbon, we can control the switching ability. Not only is this a new type of switchable molecule, but by grafting the molecule onto metal (gold) or carbon means that we can potentially bridge the gap between traditional semiconductor devices and components for nanoscale plastic electronics."

The research is published in the April issue of Nature Nanotechnology. I'm betting that chip makers and medical device manufacturers will be very interested in learning more about this ground-breaking research. While the research focuses on MP3 players, the implications of the knowledge gained could have a tremendous impact on the future of medical information storage.