A new technique enables data storage in synthetic polymers, allowing direct access to bits without full sequence decoding and significantly increasing storage density and stability.
The need for data storage is growing rapidly and synthetic polymers appear to be an efficient alternative to traditional storage solutions in that they can store information using less space and energy.
However, conventional recovery methods such as mass spectrometry limit the length—and therefore the storage capacity—of individual polymer chains.
Recently, a team of scientists developed a new approach that eliminates this limitation, allowing direct access to specific bits of data without having to read the entire string.
According to, macromolecules with defined sequencessuch as DNA and synthetic polymers, are a solution for long-term storage of large, rarely accessed data sets.
Synthetic polymers have more advantages over DNA, namely a simple synthesis, higher density storage and stability under severe conditions.
Its only disadvantage is the fact that the information is decoded by mass spectrometry or tandem mass sequencing. As for these methods the size of the molecules must be limited, this characteristic limits storage capacity of each polymer chain.
Furthermore, the entire string must be decoded in sequence.
Kyoung Taek Kim and his team from the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University have developed a new method by which very long synthetic polymer chains, whose molecular weights far exceed the limits of mass spectrometry and tandem mass sequencing, can be decoded efficiently.
During the investigation, the team encoded the university’s address in ASCII and translated it into binary code. The 512-bit sequence was stored in a polymer chain made of two different monomers: lactic acid to represent the 1 and phenylactic acid to represent 0.
At irregular intervals, experts included fragmentation codes that contained mandelic acid for the chains to break at these locations when chemically activated.
In the experiment, the researchers obtained 18 fragments of various sizes that could be decoded individually through tandem mass sequencing.
The software initially identified the fragments based on their mass and terminal groups. During the decoding process, the molecular ions were further broken down and all fragments were also analyzed.
With the help of the CRC error detection code, the software reconstructed the sequence of the entire chain, exceeding the length limit for polymer chains.
The team also managed decode bits without sequencing the entire string of polymers.
The findings were published in Applied Chemistry International Edition.
