Having only in the last week personally discovered baroplastics - diblock copolymers that flow when put under pressure - I happily ran across a use of these materials yesterday. A Korean team is using them as a mechnical information storage device, basically pressing the polymer with an AFM tip to create holes in the film. This invention also required the development of a new baroplastic that flows at only 60 bar pressure, much lower than the 300 bar pressure that all other baroplastics require.
As an aside, there are a few idiosyncracies in the article that appears to have been translated from Italian (or maybe Spanish), given that the materials of interest of called "baroplasticos". There is also another zinger at the end of the third paragraph: In discussing alternative technologies that previously accomplished the same end, the sentence reads "The big drawback was that the technology was really hot, she only worked at temperatures between 300 and 400 ° C." (Emphasis added)
Everything flows, but only the macromolecules are worth the time.
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