In an effort to meet the ever-growing data needs, a team of Chinese photonic engineers has developed a high-capacity optical drive that can hold up to 200 TB of data. The team’s groundbreaking work, published in Naturehas the potential to revolutionize storage technologies, especially in data centers where space is at a premium.
Traditional DVDs, used for storing movies and data, have a capacity of 4.5 GB – enough for about two hours of video. Data is written onto the surface of the disk using a laser to etch a series of ones and zeros. However, TechXplore reports that this new technology, developed by the Chinese team, takes a completely different approach.
The engineers claim to have found a way to store data in three dimensions, rather than in a single layer, allowing them to create an optical drive with up to 100 layers.
Challenges to come
This new breakthrough was achieved by developing a special coating and using unique light patterns and a dye in the coating that enabled etching on a nanoparticle scale. This process has allowed the team to store data at an unprecedented level.
However, the team recognizes that there are still challenges to be overcome before these “super DVDs” can be brought to market. The current process of writing data to the disk is slow and energy-intensive, problems that the team believes can be addressed. Furthermore, the production costs of such DVDs and the potential retail price for consumers remain unclear.
Despite these obstacles, the Chinese research team remains optimistic. They believe they are on the right track to sell DVDs that can store massive amounts of data not only to consumers but also to data storage facilities, businesses and media companies.