Highly Water-soluble Security Memory Device Developed in South Korea

The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced on December 22 that its research team led by professor Choi Yang-kyu at the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering developed a security memory device that removes information stored in a memory by realizing a resistive random access memory (RRAM) on water-soluble solid sodium glycerine (SSG) and performing dissolution for less than 10 seconds.

Soluble memory devices currently in use adopt burning using paper substrates, and thus much time is required for discarding and an ignition device is required along with high-temperature heat. However, the research team reduced the dissolution time to several seconds by producing the memory device by inkjet printing on a SSG substrate rapidly dissolving in water. This memory device has sodium and glycerine as its main components and reacts well to water for rapid dissolution.

The team deposited the dissolvable device that can be vulnerable to heat and moisture at a temperature of as low as 150 degrees Celsius or less and by means of inkjet printing so that it reacts only to a small amount of water while normally maintaining its stability with respect to humidity. The device can be produced at a cost of about 10% of that required for silicon substrates in general.

Details of the research are available on the online edition of the Scientific Reports published on December 6. The research was conducted based on the support from the Ministry of Science, ICT & Future Planning, the National Research Foundation of Korea and the National NanoFab Center.