Storing information electrically in human skin

Abstract

Human skin has been classified as a non-volatile memristor and it is shown that information can be stored within for at least three minutes. Here we investigate whether it is possible to store information up to 20 minutes. Furthermore, we investigate whether the information can be based on four different states, not just two (binary). We stored the information into the skin of the forehead of the test subjects under three different electrodes, which allows in principle for 64 different combinations (3 electrodes, 4 states) and one can think of numbers on the base of four. For this experiment, we decided on the numbers 1234 and 3024 (that correspond to numbers 27 and 50 in the decimal system). Writing of the different states was done by the application of DC voltage pulses that cause electro-osmosis in the sweat ducts (nonlinear electrical measurements). Based on our results, we were not able to distinguish between four different states. However, we can show that binary information storage in human skin is possible for up to 20 minutes.