Permanent bit on hard drives

2009/12/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Hardwarea

The technology of hard drives does not last forever, without degrading. Depending on the conditions, some digital formats can begin to degrade before a decade. Therefore, some physicists at the University of California have developed a permanent structure at the molecular level. Putting an iron crystal inside a carbon nanotube has achieved a structure that can act as a bit. The application of electric current allows moving the crystal from one end to the other of the nanotube encoding numbers 0 and 1. This structure will also degrade over time, but scientists believe this will not happen for millions of years.