Data is packed into an ultra-dense material

Jun 5, 2009 09:27 GMT  ·  By

Up until this point, the golden rule in the industry of memory storing devices was that the greater the density of an information-storing medium, the shorter its durability. Stone tablets hold for millions of years, but hold only limited amounts of information, whereas flash memories hold a lot of data, but can only be relied upon for short periods of time. Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have bridged that gap by creating a new, ultra-dense material that can store its content for up to a billion years.

 

The material developed at Berkeley cannot only hold the data for longer than the average few decades regular silicon-based chips can, but also pack several thousands of times the same amount of information as the competition in a single square inch. Details of the accomplishment are available online, in the latest issue of the famous journal Nano Letters.

 

“We've developed a new mechanism for digital memory storage that consists of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle enclosed within the hollow of a multi-walled carbon nanotube. Through this combination of nanomaterials and interactions, we've created a memory device that features both ultra-high density and ultra-long lifetimes, and that can be written to and read from using the conventional voltages already available in digital electronics,” explains Berkeley researcher Alex Zettl, the leader of the newest research.

 

“Interestingly, the Domesday Book, the great survey of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086 and written on vellum, has survived over 900 years, while the 1986 BBC Domesday Project, a multimedia survey marking the 900th anniversary of the original Book, required migration from the original high-density laser discs within two decades because of media failure,” he adds.

 

Zettl explains that the secret behind the amazing performance the new material can put on is a moving particle, called an iron nanoparticle, which has the size of about 1.50,000th of a human hair. It moves inside a hollow carbon nanotube, and its position at one point is what gives the “1” and the “0” in the data stream.

 

“The shuttle memory has application for archival data storage with information density as high as one trillion bits per square inch and thermodynamic stability in excess of one billion years. Furthermore, as the system is naturally hermetically sealed, it provides its own protection against environmental contamination,” Zettl concludes.