The 500,000 GB MP3 Player

Can you even imagine an MP3 player with a 500,000 GB capacity? It’s pretty much beyond belief. The most generous player today can only hold around 40,000 songs – they’d hardly makea dent on this. The thing is, it could easily happen. Scientists at the University of Glasgow have created a nanotechnology breakthrough that could increasestorage capacity by 150,000 times. It could mean 500,000 GB on a single chip and inch square. The Glasgow scientists worked to create the molecule-sized switch that’s at the heart of it all.Professor Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow said, “What we have done is find a way to potentially increase the data storage capabilities in a radical way. We have been able to assemble afunctional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, and position them precisely 0.32 nm apart so that they can form a totally new type of molecular switching device. The keyadvantage of the molecule sized switch is information / transistor density in traditional semi-conductors.  Molecule sized switches would lead to increasing data storage to say 4 Petabits persquare inch. This breakthrough shows conceptually that this is possible (showing the bulk effect) but we are yet to solve the fabrication and addressing problems. The fact these switches work oncarbon means that they could be embedded in plastic chips so silicon is not needed and the system becomes much more flexible both physically and technologically.”   The discovery was firstreported in Nature Nanotechnology.