Monster Movies DVD summarizes 2000.

It should look like a normal DVD - but much more information to cope with nanotechnology researchers to the wealth of data storage disks dramatically multiply. In laboratory work the fascinating technology already.

 

Where's a few more gigabytes?

Digital photos in Raw format, lossless compressed music and videos in high definition require more and more storage space. And so it is not surprising that researchers are already on a new generation of DVD to work, although its successor - the Blu-ray disc - not even on the market have been established.

Fit 8.5 gigabytes on a double layer DVD, the half on a simple - which roughly corresponds to a film. A Blu-ray disc brings it to 25 to 50 gigabytes. Those windows, researchers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have developed now, should be between 1600 and even 10,000 gigabytes can take without having to contribute to the size of the disc, something changes. The researchers expect that 2000 film on such a monster slice fit.

Succeed thanks to nanoparticles made of gold, a store in five dimensions allow reporting Min Gu and his colleagues in the science magazine "Nature" (459, page 410-413). In five to ten years could be the monster wheels commercially available, write the researchers.

"We have shown that nano-structures in a slice can be integrated so that the storage capacity increases, but the size of the disc itself is changing," says Gu. The trick succeeded, thanks to the extra dimensions.

Conventional DVDs use three-dimensional structures for data storage. Thanks to the nanoparticles, the researchers introduced two additional dimensions: one for color and one for the polarization of light. When the particles are gold nanotubes, the so-called surface plasmons, as and when they are made of light. These are waves on the surface of the discs.

Because the response of nanoparticles to light also depends on their nature, the researchers succeeded in the laboratory, information in a whole wavelength range in the same place of the disc drive. Conventional DVDs and Blu-ray discs only work with a defined wavelength of light.

Recorded at zero and 90 degrees

Similar to the color, the Australian scientists also provide information with light of different polarization levels in the material store - the fifth dimension. "The polarization can rotate 360 degrees," explains James Chon team of researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology. "We can, for example, at zero degree polarization data record," says Chon. In addition, information could be in a different polarization level, about 90 degrees, save, without causing mutual superpositions come.

"These extra dimensions are the key to discs with ultra-high capacity," says Gu. It should, however, still some problems to be solved, the researchers admit that so far as the very low write speed. Applications for the Monster-DVDs, there are many, such as gigantic storage of medical data from the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Even the military could build on the terrabyte discs large amounts of data stored encrypted.

The researcher claims to have already signed a contract with Samsung on the commercial use of their memory proceedings.

Whether the nanotechnology will one day really can be, it is at the present time hardly say. How difficult to introduce a new format can be shown by the example of Blu-ray.
For years there was a format war with HD-DVD, the market for HD discs with movies paralyzed. Meanwhile
the duel is decided - but by a massive paragraph, to the film industry and many manufacturers believed, is Blu-ray so far away.

There is even justifiable doubts as to whether future data and movies are still stored on disks is. Always allow for higher data rates, for example, the distribution of films via online video. The Australian Super DVD could, if the jump on the market ever succeed, even on a relatively expensive niche application.