Ninety percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years, with a massive 2.5 quintillion bytes generated every single day. As you might suspect, this causes some challenges when it comes to storage. While one option is to gradually turn every square inch of free land into giant data centers, researchers from China may have come up with a more elegant solution.
In a potential breakthrough, they have developed a new nanofilm — 80 times thinner than a human hair — that is able to store large amounts of data holographically. A single 10-by-10 cm piece of this film could archive more than 1,000 times the amount of data found on a DVD. By our count, that means around 8.5 TB of data. This data can also be retrieved incredibly quickly, at speeds of up to 1GB per second: The equivalent of 20 times the reading speed of modern flash memory.
In the journal Optical Materials Express, the researchers detail the fabrication process of the new film. This involves using a laser to write information onto silver nanoparticles on a titanium dioxide (titania) semiconductor film. This stores the data in the form of 3D holograms, thereby allowing it to be compressed into smaller spaces than regular optical systems.
That’s exciting enough, but what really makes the work promising is the fact that the data is stored in a way that is stable. Previous attempts at creating films for holographic data storage have proven less resilient than alternate storage methods since they can be wiped by exposure to ultraviolet light. That makes them less-than-viable options for long-term information storage. The creators of this new film, however, have shown that it has a high stability even in the presence of such light. This environmental stability means that the device could be used outside — or even conceivably in harsher radiation conditions like outer space.
Going forward, the researchers aim to test their new film by putting it through its paces outdoors. Should all go according to plan, it won’t be too long before this is available on the market. We might be willing to throw down a few bucks on Kickstarter for a piece!
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