The Hindu News Update Service
News Update Service
Saturday, May 23, 2009 : 1300 Hrs
Sci. & Tech.
Coming soon: Futuristic discs!
Washington (PTI): Futuristic discs with a storage capacity 2000 times that of
current DVDs could be just around the corner, thanks to researchers who have
created them using nanotechnology to store information in various colours.
An international team, led by Swinburne University of Technology, has in fact
been able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase the amount
of information contained on a single disc, the 'Nature' journal reported.
According to the researchers, their work has shown how nanotechnology could
enable the creation of 'five dimensional' discs with huge storage capacities.
"We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a
disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size
of the disc," lead researcher Prof Min Gu said.
Discs currently have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles the
researchers were able to introduce a spectral -- or colour -- dimension as well
as a polarisation dimension. "These extra dimensions are the key to creating
ultra-high capacity discs," Gu said.
And, in order to create the "colour dimension", the researchers inserted gold
nanorods onto a disc's surface.
As nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the team
to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the
same physical disc location.
This is a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in single colour
wavelength using a laser, they say.
"The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees. So for example, we were able to
record at zero degree polarisation.
Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90
degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other," co-researcher
James Chon said.
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