Tiny Punchcard-Like "Dent" Encoding on a Clever Polymer Could Quadruple Data Storage Densities

Wiped in seconds by a quick burst of heat, this mechanical storage system can encode data by depth for increased storage densities.

Gareth Halfacree
2 months agoHW101

Researchers from Flinders University, the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, and the University of Adelaide have developed a new polymer that, they say, could deliver a big boost for high-density data storage — by encoding values by depth.

"This research unlocks the potential for using simple, renewable polysulfides in probe-based mechanical data storage, offering a potential lower-energy, higher density and more sustainable alternative to current technologies," says first author Abigail Mann, a PhD candidate in Flinders University's College of Science and Engineering, of the team's work and its potential impact — at a time when the demands of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom put ever-growing strain on storage, compute, and energy resources.

"The age of big data and artificial intelligence is increasingly driving demand for data storage solutions," adds senior author Justin Chalker. "New solutions are needed for the ever-growing computing and data storage needs of the information era. Alternatives are being sought to hard disk drives, solid-state drives and flash memory which are constrained by data density limits – or the amount of information they can store in a particular area or volume."

The team's polymer works, in the simplest terms possible, a little like a classic punchcard: rather than magnetic flux, like a traditional hard drive, data is encoded as physical indentations — though at a much smaller scale than your classic 80-column card. Rather than simply recording data as to whether there is an indentation at a particular location, though, the system developed by the team allows a single "bit" to store multiple possible values by varying the depth of the indent.

"Exquisite control of indentation depth is possible over 1-30nm," the researchers explain. "This control enables data encoding not just as a function of the presence or absence of an indent, but also indentation depth. This ternary coding increases the data tensity fourfold over binary coding. Furthermore, the coding can be done at room temperature which is rare for mechanical information storage."

The polymer developed by the team has other advantages, too. One is that it's cheap to make, using readily-accessible sulfur and dicyclopentadiene; another is that it can be wiped clean in seconds through the application of heat, and reused multiple times. The only real roadblock to its broad adoption: at present, data is stored and read using a probe guided by an atomic force microscope — not the cheapest piece of equipment, and not something you can shrink down to fit in your average laptop.

The team's work has been published in the journal Advanced Science under open-access terms.

Gareth Halfacree
Freelance journalist, technical author, hacker, tinkerer, erstwhile sysadmin. For hire: freelance@halfacree.co.uk.
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