Scientists at the University of Iowa and colleagues at New York University are moving a step closer to develop inexpensive computers, cell phones and other systems that substitute flexible plastic for silicon chips. They have come up with a new technique that will help overcome a major obstacle in the development of such plastic devices.
Effective way to store information inside computer chips in most efficiently done by using magnetism as it ensures the information to survive for years without any additional power. But, to encode information in light for fiber optic transmission is relatively cheap and easy procedure.
Michael Flatte, Prof. of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS), said, “Critical issue is how to convert information from one type to another”.

Michael, also director of the UI Optical Science and Technology Center, added the energy cost is too high in case of flexible, plastic computing devices which is not the case with ordinary, silicon-chip-based computers.
In the experiment, Flatte and his team successfully converted information encoded in magnetic storage to light in a flexible plastic device at room temperature and without allowing the flow of electrical current. Markus Wohlgenannt, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Optical Science and Technology Center, said that magnetic fields from magnetic storage device can directly modify the light emission from the device.
This technique could help solve two main problems of storage and communication for new types of inexpensive, low-power computers based on conducting plastics. Andrew Kent, of New York University, said that the same principle when applied on small devices would help enable new types of high capacity storage technologies.