14 DAY TRIAL // Currently, Blu-ray disks are the most capacious optical storage media available on the market, but even they have reached a point where they are barely capable of housing the newest PS3 games. Indeed, Sony and Panasonic did announce plans to increase capacity to 33.4GB per layer. A certain team of Japanese researchers, however, seem to think that this progression in density is not going fast enough, which is why it came up with a solution that might make Blu-ray, and all other optical disks, obsolete.
Apparently, the team found a material, known as titanium pentoxide, that might serve the purpose of creating disks with up to 1,000 more storage space than a Blu-ray disk. By hitting titanium pentoxide crystals, in their black-color metal state, with a laser, the compound turns into a brown semiconductor. The aforementioned data capacity can be attained by using the smallest type of such particles.
The most interesting part of this technology is that light seems to be all that is required to make it work. Since the titanium oxide can switch back and forth between the metal and semiconductor states at room temperature, by merely being exposed to light, it already has its own on-off function. This responsiveness to light can also be used in the act of scribing data itself, since colors reflect light differently to contain different information. What is really impressive is that, contrary to what one might expect, making such an optical disk would ultimately be cheaper than making a Blu-ray disk.
The compound is "promising as a material for a next-generation optical storage device." Shin-ichi Ohkoshi, chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo, told AFP by telephone. "You don't have to worry about procuring rare metals. Titanium oxide is cheap and safe, already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint,” he added.
This affordability is possible because titanium oxide has a market price about 100 times smaller than that of the rare element used in Blu-ray manufacture (germanium-antimony-tellurium). Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing how soon such superdisks will make it to market. There is also no way of knowing if making an optical drive unit capable of scribing data on such disks will be just as simple.