Nanotechnology researchers at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne have unveiled a new optical storage medium that can store up to 2000 movies on a single disc.
The new optical disc holds 10,000 times the data of a standard DVD and works by adding extra dimensions to the spectrum of the disc.
Discs currently have three spatial dimensions. By using gold nanorods Gu and colleagues were able to add two additional dimensions, one based on the colour spectrum, and the other on polarisation.
"We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc,'' said Min Gu, who led the team.
Because nanoparticles react to light depending on their shape, it was possible to record information in a range of different colour's wavelengths at the same physical location on the disc.
"The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees,'' explained co-author James Chon.
"We were, for example, able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other,'' he said in a statement.
Commercial production of the new technology is at least 5 years off, but with something that can hold 10,000 times the storage of a regular DVD, don't expect it to be cheap!
(Source: news.com.au)
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