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Dutch scientists have created the world's smallest hard disk by developing a new rewritable storage technology capable of writing information atom by atom.
The 500TB/inch2 disk is the work of a team led by Sander Otte at the Technical University of Delft and it can pack up to three times more data than current flash and hard disk memory offerings.
This has been made possible as the disk stores information in the positions of individual chlorine atoms on a copper surface, built on a memory of 1 kilobyte (8,000 bits). Each bit of data is represented by the position of a single atom meaning the team was able to reach a density of 500 Terabits per square inch. This brought the reduction in storage density technology to a limit not seen before.
"In theory, this storage density would allow all books ever created to be written on a single post stamp," said Dr Otte. “Or, by another measure, the entire contents of the US Library of Congress could be stored in a 0.1mm-wide cube."
In order to write information on such a tiny scale, the researchers used a scanning tunnelling microscope, a process which uses a sharp needle that probes the atoms on the surface one by one. Otte compares this process to that of a sliding puzzle because it allows the researchers to push the atoms around until they fit tightly together.
"Every bit consists of two positions on a surface of copper atoms, and one chlorine atom that we can slide back and forth between these two positions," he explained. "If the chlorine atom is in the top position, there is a hole beneath it - we call this a 1. If the hole is in the top position and the chlorine atom is therefore on the bottom, then the bit is a 0."
The team behind the development says that because the chlorine atoms are surrounded by other chlorine atoms, except near the holes, they keep each other in place. This is the reason why this holey method is much more stable than methods with loose atoms, making it more suitable for data storage.
However, despite its promise for the future, the scientists insist it's not quite ready to become mainstream yet. The technology was only capable of storing information at a temperature of -196°C and the speed of single write and read processes is still slow, on the scale of minutes – so far from practical at this stage.
Although Otte said "through this achievement we have certainly come a big step closer".
The findings are published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
