In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Wuhan University and the State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science have demonstrated the potential of Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR)-based two-dimensional nanostructures for optical storage.
The study, published in Optical communicationoffers another option for ultra-high-density, high-resolution optical storage.
Optical storage technology has developed rapidly recently, with more and more research focusing on high-density multi-dimensional storage. Although three-dimensional storage can achieve ultra-high-density optical storage by stacking two-dimensional storage layer by layer, it has limitations. These include high production costs, large processing errors and complex readout processes. As a result, the implementation of ultra-high-density two-dimensional optical storage has become an area of great interest.
Superior to Blu-ray
The research team, led by Zhidan Lei, Dekun Yang and Yiduo Xu, used 'plasmonic technology' to realize ultra-high-density, low-maintenance media and long-life optical storage. They designed rotating nanoscale gold square two-dimensional arrays to achieve ultra-high-density optical storage.
For LSPR nanoarrays with angular resolution, the storage density was found to be 12.79 GB/cm2 when the rotation angle of a single unit gold square nanostructure is 2°. This is a whopping 53.29 times larger than that of a single-layer Blu-ray disc. The researchers found that by varying the shape and size of the nanostructure, even higher two-dimensional storage densities could be achieved.
The study's findings show that, with proper design, the density of two-dimensional optical storage can equal or even exceed that of three-dimensional optical storage, potentially revolutionizing the way we store data in the future save, archive and open.