Scientists from the Technical University of Delft have just succeeded in creating an atomic hard drive that is small enough to fit in a single square inch but has a storage density that is 500 times greater than anything available today. It can fit 500 terabits of data into a drive that is no larger than a postage stamp but is not ready to hit the market just yet.
This innovative, little hard drive consists of chlorine atoms on a copper surface that form a square grid. Whenever an atom is missing it creates a hole in the grid. This is what allows scientists to remove atoms to create the on/off mechanism that is needed for the data storage. The leader of the study, Sander Otte, stated that the combination of chlorine atoms and supporting copper crystal surface and the ability to manipulate the holes of the grid makes it a more reliable, reproducible, and scalable manipulation technique that can be easily automated.
With the introduction of these minuscule hard drives, the benefits would be incredible with this amount of storage compatibility to offer, but it is unlikely that we will be seeing them anytime soon. This is because for the hard drives to be able to function, first, they need to be cooled down to liquid nitrogen temperature (-346 degrees F). This is not very fast prices at present so don’t expect to be seeing this sort of technology released to the public just yet, but advances are made every day, so you never know what may be around the corner.
Story Via; Gizmodo
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