Electric field–guided random-access DNA data storage
- Doyeon Lim
- Taeseok Kang
- Wonjin Lee
- Zeeshan Haider
- Seunghwan Noh
- Minsang Yu
- Xiaohua Huang
- Hyuk Soo Eun
- Youngjun Song
2026-06-05
DNA offers the promise of high-density, long-term storage, yet current systems face limitations due to polymerase chain reaction–based manual workflows that are inherently slow, error prone, and difficult to scale for practical applications. Here, we present an electric field–guided DNA pool elongation system that addresses these challenges through molecular data control. Our electric field–driven DNA memory chip integrates immobilization for encoding with reusable synthesis access capabilities. Electric field–driven primer access and DNA synthesis were evaluated through position-specific primer hybridization combined with elongation at room temperature, maintaining high fidelity while dramatically reducing access times. This electric field–driven approach exhibited linear degradation, projected to exceed 10 5 reuse cycles. Using this method with a common primer, we successfully stored and retrieved different DNA pools, enabling one-step next-generation sequencing library preparation. We further retrieved a 0.2–megabyte three-dimensional object encoded in 1339 unique strands, achieving 96.6% perfect matching. The system demonstrates chip-level capacities approaching 1.1 × 10 9 molecules per electrode, representing a significant advancement toward practical, scalable DNA data storage.