People could save work to paper-thin flash drives by pasting them onto computer screens, claim designers.
Aditi Singh and Parang Anand have proposed a theoretical design for graphene-based paper-thin, sticky flash drives that they claim could save data by pasting it like a sticky note onto a screen.
According to the proposal, a single layer of graphene squashed between two flexible protective layers could offer up to 32GB of space for storing data.
Called datastickies, the new storage devices would let people carry data like a stack of sticky-back notes from an optical data transfer surface (ODTS), a panel that can be fixed to the front surface of devices such as computer screens, televisions and music systems, according to the designs.
They could be simply peeled from the stack and stuck anywhere on the ODTS, in turn on top of the surface of choice.
The designers said the data transfer would be carried out by a medium of special conductive adhesive that sticks the datastickies to the ODTS.
The flash drive’s edges glow when the device reads data from the device.
Designers said that the new technique could bridge the virtual world and the physical world.
"Digital data becomes easier to associate with, as it can be integrated with the physical objects it relates to," they said.
