New gold DVDs and five dimensions

2009/05/26 Lakar Iraizoz, Oihane - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Materialak
• Nanoteknologia
• Telekomunikazioak

They have invented a new way to store information on DVDs and are developing it at the Australian University of Technology Swinburne. The new system can store more than 1 terabyte (one billion bits), 10,000 times more information than DVDs that can now store more information.

Gold nanomacilites have been used to increase both the capacity of the DVD without altering its size: nanomacilites of different lengths have been introduced in the information writing layers. Due to the length and orientation of the type of light that sticks can absorb, different types of laser have been used to record information.

On the one hand, they have “played” with laser polarization. The laser with a certain polarization only interacts with gold particles oriented in its direction. In this interaction, gold particles melt and those that were sticks become spheres. In this way, part of the DVD is recorded. However, particles not oriented in the direction of this laser are out of use.

For recording you can use a laser of another polarization or a light of another wavelength or color. In fact, the light of each wavelength only affects the sticks of a certain length. As with polarized light, the use of multi-color laser allows to store a lot of information in a given space.

Researchers have used lasers of two polarizations and three colors to write on discs. In addition, as in the most powerful DVDs of the moment, they have been able to write the information in several layers. Thus, they have been able to store 140 gigabytes of information per cubic centimeter of disk.

Writing in several layers is called writing in three dimensions, as Australian researchers have managed to write in five dimensions, adding to the previous three two: polarization and wavelength.

Images: Nature