Researchers Sextuple Hard Drive Capacity With a Pinch of Salt
The IMRE team lead by Joel Yang developed a new "nanopatterning" process that can more tightly pack the data-holding miniature structures on the platter of a hard drive. The latest hard drive holds approximately 0.5 Terabit/in2 (terabits per square inch) of information, but using the new process produces a device that can hold 3.3 Terabit/in2. That’s roughly a six-fold increase, so 1TB drives could potentially be bumped up to 6TB with this new process.
The process "uses an extremely high-resolution e-beam lithography process" to produce 10-nanometer grains that contain bits in a single structure, whereas other platters store data in clusters of 7 to 8-nanometer grains. In other words, one single 10-nanometer grain can hold the same amount of data as several 7- to 8-nanometer grains do on current hard drives.
Yang also discovered he could produce even smaller 4.5-nm nanostructures (without requiring massive equipment upgrades) by adding the sodium chloride to a developer solution that's used in existing lithography processes.
So there's something to chew on the next time you sprinkle salt on your food.
[IMRE via The Telegraph]
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