Scientists unravel new high-tech use for silk

Chinese scientists are reinventing the ancient silk tradition by turning the fine fabric into a new data storage technology.

The so-called "silk drive," a rewritable, high-capacity storage medium, can store both digital and biological information including DNA, blood samples and active pharmaceutical compounds.

It can also be implanted into human beings for medical use, where it can remain in the body permanently or degrade at a predetermined time, according to the research team from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

As traditional semiconductor hard disks struggle to cope with increasing storage demands from high-tech applications, scientists are exploring biological media with higher capacity.

Tao Hu, who led the research, is embedding data into silk.

His team applied near-field infrared nanolithography to write and read information on silk fibroin, creating the world’s first silk drive.

One square inch of silk can store 64 GB of data, while weighing just 0.1 gram. Silk drives also demonstrate long-term stability under high humidity, high-dose radiation and high magnetic fields.

Silk can store texts, images, audio files and biological data.

“Silk fibroin can form water-and-air-proof dense structures on a nanometer scale to protect organic molecules such as protein, DNA and glucose from being destroyed,” Tao said.

According to Tao, silk drives can be programmed with predetermined life spans, lasting from several days to several years. This would make them ideal for storing classified or sensitive information.

The technology has been patented. It is expected to be commercialized and become the next generation of high-capacity and high-reliability data storage technology.

The research was jointly launched by the Shanghai institute, Stony Brook University of New York and University of Texas at Austin. It has been published by the journal Nature Nanotechnology.