Freely bendable and foldable organic memory devices were demonstrated by domestic researchers.

According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology on the 25^th, a team of Prof. Jang Sik Lee in the School of Advanced Materials Engineering at Kookmin University has succeeded in performing easily bendable and foldable memory devices by taking advantage of organic memory devices on a thin plastic substrate.

In particular, a distinct feature of the device is that it overcame the limitations of a decline in ability to store information resulting from prolonged use and a decline in function arising from repeated movement and this is the biggest flaw of organic memory device.

The details of the study have been published in a recent issue of the online edition of ‘Nano Letters’, a science journal of the highest authority in the field of Nano.

General semiconductor devices are being demonstrated on a solid material substrate like silicon; however, Prof. Lee’s team created nonvolatile memory based on organic transistor on a thin flexible plastic substrate.

Above all, in order to deal with the limitation of organic memory devices that easily erase information within a short period of time without a power, engineers improved the storage times of more than a year by embedding ‘gold nanoparticles’, excellent in the property of storing charge carriers in charge storage layers.

Additionally, the researchers verified through experiment that stored information is not destroyed even after more than 1,000 repeated bending cycles.

Accordingly, the result of this study has proved the possibility of developing next-generation electronic devices which are easily bendable.

The research has further produced a possibility of developing the next-generation electrical devices with a new concept such as wearable mobile phone like a watch, wearable computer, electronic book or display in a form of roller and what not.

Prof. Lee revealed the significance of the research in that they “laid the foundation for developing mobile phone and electronic book that are easily foldable and modifiable within 10 years through creating easily bendable nonvolatile organic memory devices”.