Researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Center have shown that graphene can be used to create ultra-high-density hard drives, providing a tenfold jump over current technology.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was conducted by British researchers in collaboration with colleagues from India, Switzerland, Singapore and the United States.
Hard drives, which have been widely used in personal computers since the mid-1980s, have become smaller in this time, but significantly more spacious. Although they are being squeezed out by solid state drives, hard drives are still popular due to their lower cost.
The increase in volume is associated with an increase in recording density, in turn, provided by the improvement of two key components: the platters and the head. In particular, developments that made it possible to reduce the gap between them.
Currently, a significant part of this gap is occupied by carbon-based coatings – layers designed to protect the plate from mechanical damage and corrosion. Since 1990, the recording density has quadrupled and the coating thickness has decreased from 12.5 nm to about 3 nm. These parameters correspond to a density of 1 terabyte per square inch.
Researchers from Cambridge replaced the currently used coatings with graphene (one to four layers) and tested friction, wear, corrosion, thermal stability and compatibility with lubricants. In addition to its unsurpassed fineness, graphene has proven to have all the ideal outer coating properties for hard drives in terms of corrosion protection, low friction, wear resistance, hardness, lubricant compatibility, and surface smoothness. It cuts friction in half and provides better corrosion and wear protection than current solutions. In fact, one layer of graphene reduces corrosion by 2.5 times.
The scientists also tried out locally heated media recording (HAMR), a new technology that can increase storage density. Unlike graphene, currently used coatings do not operate at the temperatures required for HAMR. Graphene, combined with HAMR, is said to increase the recording density to an unprecedented level of over 10 terabytes per square inch.
Scientists do not say how soon the development will come to serial HDDs.
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