Scientific breakthrough heralds golden memory device

Industry leaders in the electronic goods field could soon be upping their claims to buy gold, after a reported research breakthrough involving the metal.

Researchers in Australia and Korea have employed stacked layers of gold nanoparticles to raise the capacity of the storage density of flash memory, according to Chemistry World.

The reported discovery could be highly significant both for gold prices and for technological products, with flash memories found in abundant electronic products, from USB sticks to memory cards for digital cameras.

These devices normally contain a single layer of devices to trap electric charge and encode digital information, but the multiple stacked gold layers could act as a higher capacity trapping device, when deployed in alternating layers with an insulating polymer.

A further industrial demand for gold to add to its existing electronics uses, as well as demand emerging from the dental industry, and in greater quantity still, from gold jewelry manufacturers.

Jang-Sik Lee, researcher at Kookmin University in Seoul, told Chemistry World: "By using this method, we can increase the memory density by about 3.6 times in comparison to the single layered devices."