Holographic Data Storage is Just Around the Corner

As the need for larger and larger storage capacities that occupy very little physical space has become direr over the past few years, an increasingly larger number of companies try to come up with certain solutions that will grant them a competitive edge over the competition. And that's exactly what TDK seems to have managed to achieve, as the company has just announced that it has developed a material with enhanced recording capability intended for holographic media.

Thus, according to a report by Tadashi Nezu for the Japanese web site TechOn, TDK Corporation's new material has an M# ratio of 41.8/mm (the M# ratio refers to the overwriting capability of holographic media), which is a lot better than the company's previous results. Thus, as M# gets higher, the recording density is also higher, thus leading to larger amounts of data being stored on the same space.

Furthermore, according to the company's statement, said data was recorded on the prototype material by coaxial holographic recording and it seems that the respective material can provide a recording density of 76 Gbits/square inch, far superior to any technology currently available on the market.

As the report informs us, the people over at TDK managed to accomplish the aforementioned increase in the M# ratio by intensifying the difference in refractive index between the portion that turns into polymer by the monomer multiplexing at the time of recording interference fringes and the binder portion except the polymer. The intensity of diffracted light at the time of playback increases as the difference in refractive index becomes greater, thereby resulting in satisfactory reproduction signals even when the data is overwritten.

Of course, holographic recording media are still far away from becoming commercially available, which means that we'll have to rely on the "old" HD DVDs and Blu-ray discs for a while longer. In any case, the fact that large companies like TDK are constantly improving technologies that haven't even hit the market yet makes us feel quite confident about the future of storage (which will most likely be quite a very interesting one).

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