Diamonds can retailer knowledge stably for lengthy intervals of time
College of Science and Expertise of China
The well-known advertising slogan about how a diamond is without end could solely be a slight exaggeration for a diamond-based system able to storing data for thousands and thousands of years – and now researchers have created one with a record-breaking storage density of 1.85 terabytes per cubic centimetre.
Earlier strategies have additionally used laser pulses to encode knowledge into diamonds, however the greater storage density afforded by the brand new technique means a diamond optical disc with the identical quantity as a typical Blu-ray might retailer roughly 100 terabytes of information – the equal of about 2000 Blu-rays – whereas lasting far longer than a typical Blu-ray’s lifetime of just some a long time.
“Once the internal data storage structures are stabilised using our technology, diamond can achieve extraordinary longevity – data retention for millions of years at room temperature – without requiring any maintenance,” says Ya Wang on the College of Science and Expertise of China in Hefei.
Wang and his colleagues labored with small items of diamond only some millimetres lengthy, though they are saying future variations of the system could possibly be within the type of bigger storage discs. Their technique used ultrafast laser pulses to knock a few of a diamond’s carbon atoms misplaced, abandoning empty areas the dimensions of single atoms that every exhibited a steady brightness stage.
By controlling the power of the laser, the researchers might make a number of empty areas at particular websites inside the diamond, and the density of these areas influenced every web site’s total brightness. “The number of empty spaces can be determined by looking at the brightness, which allows us to read the stored information,” says Wang.
The workforce then saved photos – together with Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 sequence of photographs displaying a rider on a galloping horse – by mapping the brightness of every pixel to the brightness ranges of particular websites contained in the diamond. The system saved this knowledge with greater than 99 per cent accuracy and completeness.
This storage technique isn’t but commercially viable as a result of it requires costly lasers and high-speed fluorescence imaging cameras, together with different gadgets, says Wang. However he and his colleagues anticipate that their diamond-based system might finally be miniaturised to suit inside an area the dimensions of a microwave oven.
“In the short term, government agencies, research institutes and libraries focused on archiving and data preservation would likely be eager to adopt this technology,” he says.
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