Possible future optical media: 10 TB, 600 years, one disk



What is a floppy disk, the younger generation may no longer know. And it’s not worth blaming them, because this type of information carrier has long been outdated, and others have replaced it. For example, optical disks. These media appeared quite a long time ago, by the standards of technological development, but are still used everywhere. Entering the electronics store, we will see on the shelves discs with video games, films, operating systems and software. However, in recent years, such a distribution method as digital distribution (for example, Steam or the PS Store) has been developing more and more. Simply put, they went to the site of the “store”, chose a product, paid and after that the download process went straight to the storage medium built into your device. It turns out optical disks and then they begin to concede? It turns out that so. And ordinary people and data centers now use SSD (solid state) and HDD drives. “The future is with SSDs,” some say. But scientists from RMIT University (Melbourne Royal Technological University) and the WIT Institute of Technology (WIT), who developed a 10 TB optical disc that can store data for 600 years, do not agree with these statements. Scientists have called this technology - nano-optical memory for long data. What kind of novelty is this, what is its peculiarity, and whether the world needs it - we will now try to figure it out. Go. Developed a 10 TB optical drive capable of storing data for 600 years. Scientists have called this technology - nano-optical memory for long data. What kind of novelty is this, what is its peculiarity, and whether the world needs it - we will now try to figure it out. Go. Developed a 10 TB optical drive capable of storing data for 600 years. Scientists have called this technology - nano-optical memory for long data. What kind of novelty is this, what is its peculiarity, and whether the world needs it - we will now try to figure it out. Go.

What inspired this project?

The total amount of data in the world is growing every year, and it is growing exponentially. IDC analyzed the situation in 2016 and expressed its vision for the future of the Earth’s infosphere in 2025. The figures presented in this report are striking.

According to IDC, the total amount of data in 2025 will be 163 ZB, which is 10 times more than the volume of the sample 2016. The “evolution” of data will be noticeable not only in quantitative but also in qualitative indicator.


Total data growth from 2010 to 2025, IDC co.

At the moment, the lion's share of information (approximately 60%) is generated by end users. By 2025, the main data generators will be commercial organizations, which will lead to the emergence of new tools to expand their capabilities, as well as the need to introduce new methods for managing this data.

IDC analysts also argue that there will be an increase in non-entertainment data. The percentage of data in terms of its importance will also change. 20% will become critical, and 10% over critical.

The development of IoT (Internet of Things) will also greatly affect the Earth’s infosphere, since according to the forecast in 2025 the average person will contact devices connected to the network about 4,800 times a day. Data received from such devices will occupy 20% of the total information background of the planet.

You can see more detailed data and analysis in the IDC report itself.

Why optical discs?

First of all, in answering this question, scientists draw our attention to the fact that recently there has been an increase in attention not to “big” data, but to “long” ones, which allow us to generate new ideas and developments thanks to the analysis of data obtained in real time , and collected over decades or even over centuries. Long data can offer data centers more profitable (in terms of energy and financial costs) solutions.



Energy efficiency can increase up to 1000 times, as it will consume less power for cooling needed for hard drives. And media replacement will be carried out much less frequently. Also, according to scientists, optical drives are much safer compared to hard drives.


Professor Min Gu

Here is what RMIT professor and lead researcher of the Min Gu project says:
While optical technology allows you to increase the volume, the most advanced optical disc can last no more than 50 years. Our technology will allow us to create an optical disk with a large volume, in comparison with the existing optical technologies, and our tests have shown that it will work for more than half a millennium, and it can also be mass produced.
At the moment, the project has a real rival - a Blu-ray disc that can work for 1000 years. However, its volume is limited to 100 GB. While the Min Gu project is a 10 TV disc.

What is the basis of technology?

The main material for the future disk is very different from that used now - it is a gold nanoplasma hybrid glass matrix. In order to form this matrix, the use of a sol-gel process is required, which allows the use of precursor chemicals to create glass with a higher degree of purity and uniformity.

The main advantage of glass is its durability, up to 1000 years. However, glass has a limited internal capacity, that is, the data will live for a long time, but there will be few of them. Therefore, the researchers decided to combine glass with some kind of organic or inorganic material, which ultimately increased the capacity, but almost halved the service life.

Gold was chosen as an additional material, since it is as strong and durable as glass.

Gold nanorods with a diameter of 10 nm were obtained using wet chemical synthesis.

The sol-gel process at room temperature allows nanorods to be introduced into the glass composite without sintering without changing the shape of the nanoparticles, while the transition from the rod to the sphere can be used to record information. The use of inorganic materials increases Young's modulus in the region around the nanorod, which increases the service life, since in this way unwanted degradation of the form due to thermal exposure to the environment is avoided. For this purpose, the gold nanorods were placed in a glass composite consisting of organic (polyethylene glycol) and inorganic (silicon dioxide) components. The resulting mixture was placed in an oven heated to a temperature of 313 K = 39.85 C for 1 week. This temperature is much lower than the melting temperature of gold nanorods.



On theimage (a) shows that the surface of the gold nanorod is completely and without tears covered by a hybrid glass composite.

In illustration (b) are shown with different Young's moduli ratio organics and inorganics in the glass composite. With an increase in the inorganic component, Young's modulus also increases due to the strong chemical bonding of silicon dioxide. The highest Young's modulus at 90% of the inorganic material in the composite is 29 GPa, which is approximately half of the performance of quartz glass (72.4 GPa).

Image (s)A: An important factor in increasing the service life is the lifetime of the nanorod form. In order to change the shape of the new material, additional activation energy of nanorods is needed, which will allow them to overcome the elastic potential energy associated with an increase in Young's modulus during matrix expansion. Thus, an increase in the effective activation energy will significantly increase the lifetime of the form of a gold nanorod, in accordance with the Arrhenius law.

After receiving the finished sample, it had to be checked. Several tests were carried out, among which: nano-impact test, data read / write test, aging test.

Nano-impact test

This test was aimed at calculating the modulus of longitudinal elasticity (Young's modulus) of the material obtained in the laboratory. To do this, we used samples with nine impact points located in the form of a 3x3 matrix (the distance between the points is 3 μm). The load strength increased from 0 to 800 μN for 5 seconds. Further, the force of exposure, on the contrary, decreased from 800 μN to 0 within 5 seconds. Also, a force of 800 μN continuously affected the points for 10 seconds.

Read / write

The reading / writing procedure was carried out using a confocal microscope with a femtosecond laser wavelength of 820 nm and a repetition frequency of 80 MHz. The laser beam was focused on the sample through an oily liquid (immersion method) with an aperture of 1.4. Data was recorded using a raster scan. The exposure time of each data point is 25 ms. The reading was carried out by detecting the fluorescent signals of gold nanoparticles using a photoelectron multiplier. The basic level of the reading / writing process has remained unchanged for centuries.



(a) - comparison of fluorescence images (data) at different periods of reading / writing (service life: 0 years, 200 years, 400 years and 600). Scale: 10 microns.
(b)- Volumetric optical data memory with two polarization states in three layers located at a distance of 1.5 microns. The red arrow indicates the direction of polarization of the laser beam.
(c) - Four-level optical data memory card. Scale: 10 microns.

Aging

In order to simulate aging, the sample was placed in a furnace at a temperature of 453 K (179.85 C) for 3 hours, which corresponds to 600 years at room temperature.

All tests showed very good results, which, unfortunately, I could not find (the page with additional information regarding the tests does not work at the moment).

Epilogue

The group of scientists involved in this project is more than confident in its success and in its importance.
Synthesis of a nanoplasmonic hybrid glass composite based on a sol-gel process compatible with the spincoating method (rotational coating) paves the way for large-scale mass production of new optical disks. This project can become the first brick in the future optical long data for centuries ahead, which will reveal the potential for understanding long processes in astronomy, geology, biology and history. It also opens up new possibilities for highly reliable optical media that can survive extreme conditions (high temperature or high pressure).
What-what, and not to hold the faith in their brainchild to the team of Min Gu. Although the project is still at the development, testing and “polishing” stage, it has enormous potential. If the future super-disk (you can’t call it another way) will have all the promised and planned properties, it can seriously revolutionize the field of storage media. Will the new optical disks replace HDD and SSD? An extremely complex and controversial issue. For none of these technologies stands still and constantly gives out something new. Something capable of competing with rivals. In any case, no matter who becomes the sole “king” of carriers, the process of research rivalry has brought many fruits to the world of science and technology, as well as to society. For in any argument truth is born.

You can read the report of the research group via the link

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