Gigabyte shirt carries data around

You would have heard of the expression “wearing your heart on your sleeve”, but in the future, someone might actually ask you to wear your data. That puzzled look would soon make way for an acknowledgement in the future, as NASA scientists has discovered a method to transform fabrics into voluminous storage arrays. To put it in plain English, we are looking at a simple shirt being turned into a potential storage medium. As for the amount of memory that can be stored, it really depends, although terabytes would not be out of the question.

This is made possible by a couple of NASA nano-technologists from the Ames Research Center in California, where they managed to discover a method of weaving computer memory into garments. Basically, a mesh of bare copper wires are woven, with the bottom wires being coated with copper oxide. At each intersection of the woven copper grid there will lie a platinum piece, with the copper oxide coating functioning as resistive switching, resulting in the ability to stash away data on each node/intersection.

It would lead to a far more tricky situation when you need to clean your garments, that is for sure, as the future will require one to remove dirt and grime in addition to clearing up and refreshing the data deep within the fabric.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: Gigabyte, NASA