Called, atomic-scale memory, the new technology can store hundreds of times more data per square inch than any now available technology, and could eventually replace large data warehouses, such as those owned by tech companies that house your photos and videos today. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the data occupies minimum space as possible so that all of the generated information can be stored.
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“In theory, this storage density would allow all books ever created by humans to be written on a single post stamp”, said team leader Dr. Sander Otte, from the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the Delft University of Technology.
In a study published Monday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, scientists from the Technical University of Delft (TU Delft) said that they have created an atomic hard drive with a storage density that is 500 times greater than current hard drive technology. Each one is labeled with a hole marker that shows where a block is on the copper as well as if it is damaged.
Otte explained that every bit is comprised of two positions lying on copper atom surface and a chlorine atom that can be slid back and forth between the two positions, which represents either “one” or “zero”. Moving the atoms around was equivalent to writing bits.
In honour of this astounding foresight, the Delft University team encoded this very section of Feynman’s lecture in a grid 100 nanometres across, a hundredth the width of a human hair. On a flat copper surface they naturally formed a two-dimensional grid. “These markers work like miniature QR codes that carry information about the precise location of the block on the copper layer”, they said.
Using this as the basis, the team managed to write all sorts of data, including the entire text of Richard Feynman’s famous lecture, “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, and Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”. It’s done with a tool called a scanning tunnelling microscope, which is a bit like an ultra-thin needle that can nudge atoms up and down, left and right.
The discovery made a major breakthrough in the development of nanotechnology and atomic-scale storage device.
The team organized their data in blocks of 8 bytes, or 64 bits. By only have the chlorine atoms by other chlorine atoms and these holes, this method is more stable for storing data than others that rely on loose atoms.
“You could compare it to a sliding puzzle”, Otte said.
The video below gives an overview of the TUDelft atomic-scale memory system.
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For the prototype to work an ultra-clean vacuum environment is required and operations take place at very low temperature (liquid nitrogen 77K). “Our next step will be to explore the other halogens like iodine and bromine, ‘ says Otte”.
