Singapore is a small country but it has nurtured high technology businesses very successfully. Collaboration between the Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore who develop memory technology and the National University of Singapore, produced dynamic random access memory (DRAM) storage, based on a polymer in 2006. The same team had earlier produced flash memory and write-once read-many-times (WORM) memory based on polymers.
The '0' and '1' signals in this polymer-based memory were stored as high and low conductivity. A special copolymer was produced consisting of long molecular chains made of two different components finely tuned to one another. The polymer was embedded as a thin film between two electrodes. Initially in the off state it is characterized by low conductivity. A barrier hinders the flow of electrons through the film. In order to write to the memory, low voltage above a threshold (-2.8V) is required to switch the copolymer into a highly conducting state -the 'on' state.