Berkeley Lab researchers have created a unique ultra-high density memory storage medium that can preserve digital data for a billion years.When it comes to data storage, density and durability have always moved in opposite directions - the greater the density the shorter the durability, reports spacemart.
For example, information carved in stone is not dense but can last thousands of years, whereas today's silicon memory chips can hold their information for only a few decades.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have smashed this tradition with a new memory storage medium that can pack thousands of times more data into one square inch of space than conventional chips and preserve this data for more than a billion years!
The ever-growing demand for digital storage of videos, images, music and text calls for storage media that pack increasingly more data onto chips that keep shrinking in size. However, this demand runs in sharp contrast to the history of data storage.
Compare the stone carvings in the Egyptian temple of Karnak, which store approximately two bits of data per square inch but can still be read after nearly 4,000 years, to a modern DVD which can store 100 giga (billion) bits of data per square inch but will probably remain readable for no more than 30 years.
The illustration shows the configuration of a new digital memory storage device consisting of an iron nanoparticle shuttle that moves through a carbon nanotube when a voltage is applied. This memory device can pack a trillion bits of data into one square inch of medium and retain that data for a billion years.
These collaborators were able to buck data storage history by creating a programmable memory system that is based on a moveable part - an iron nanoparticle, approximately 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, that in the presence of a low voltage electrical current can be shuttled back and forth inside a hollow carbon nanotube with remarkable precision.
The multiwalled carbon nanotube and enclosed iron nanoparticle shuttle were synthesized in a single step via pyrolysis of ferrocene in argon gas at a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius. The nanotube memory elements were then ultrasonically dispersed in isopropanol and deposited on a substrate.
A transmission electron microscope provided high-resolution imaging in real time while the memory device was in operation. In laboratory tests, this device met all the essential requirements for digital memory storage including the ability to overwrite old data.
This research was primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science through its Basic Energy Sciences programs.
