Researchers at the University of Shanghai have developed a standard-sized optical disk that they say can store up to 200,000 gigabytes of data. To put that into context, this is approximately the same amount of data that is transmitted in one second over the entire internet. The team of scientists recently published the results of their study in the scientific journal Nature.
Scientists discover new method for more stable and efficient blue OLED
The research team explains that the new strategy they utilized to store data on the disk hinged on the use of a light-sensitive material called AIE-DDPR. “It has been a 10-year effort searching for this kind of material,” says Min Gu, professor of optical-electrical and computer engineering at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. “The difficulty has been how the writing and reading processes affect each other in a given material—in particular, in a three-dimensional geometry. Personally, I was surprised that nanoscale writing-recoding and reading processes both work well in our newly invented material.”
While traditional optical disks consist of a single layer, the disk created by the University of Shanghai holds 100 layers, each separated by one micrometer. While the capacity of these disks may exceed the current market necessities for visual media, the research team posits their new disk could useful in data centers. “This technology makes it possible to achieve exabit-level storage by stacking nanoscale disks into arrays, which is essential in big data centers with limited space,” said Miao Zhao, Jing Wen, Qiao Hu, Xunbin Wei, Yu-Wu Zhong, Hao Ruan, and Min Gu from the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology.
