The total data generated globally is expected to reach 175 ZB by 2025. If you burn that much onto Blu-ray discs, the stack would be 23 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. This example shows how urgent is the need to develop storage technologies that can accommodate this amount of data.
The demand for storing ever-growing volumes of information has led to the widespread adoption of data centers. These centers consume a huge amount of energy (about 3% of the world’s electricity) and mainly use hard drives, which are characterized by a relatively small capacity and limited service life (in a data center environment – up to 3-5 years). The source calls optical data storage a promising and cost-effective alternative. However, the diffraction limit limits the size of an area on an optical medium that can be used to store a unit of information, resulting in a limited capacity for optical discs.
Researchers at USST (Shanghai University of Science and Technology), RMIT University and NUS (National University of Singapore) seem to have found a way to overcome this limitation. By using a nanocomposite material containing graphene oxide flakes in the rhodium of the carrier, they were able to significantly increase the recording density.
The result corresponds to the ability to write 700 TB of data on an optical disc of the usual 12 cm diameter. This is comparable to the capacity of 28,000 single-layer Blu-ray discs. Significantly, the development uses inexpensive CW lasers, which reduces operating costs compared to traditional optical recording methods that use more expensive and bulky pulsed lasers.
Although it is too early to talk about the practical application of the technology, it is already known that it is suitable for mass production of optical discs, so its potential is enormous.
The development also has the potential for optical lithography of nanostructures in carbon chips, which are urgently needed for next-generation nanophotonic devices.
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