Toroid moment storage in nano-particles would be a true quantum leap in the area of data storage, say researchers. A new phase of matter exhibited in nanorods and nanodisks may enable a thousand-fold increase in memory and data storage. Itsy bitsy rods and disks may be able to store vast numbers of data bits.
A new phase of matter exhibited in nanorods and nanodisks may enable a thousand-fold increase in memory and data storage Latest News about Data Storage, say University of Arkansas physicists Ivan Naumov, Laurent Bellaiche and Huaxiang Fu.
A phase is a form of matter. Water, for instance, comes in liquid, gas and solid phases. In the nano-rods and disks, “this ordered phase with technological relevance is previously unknown,” said Naumov.
To pack a suitcase, you have to arrange clothes and personal goods in an orderly way or risk being unable to close the lid. The smaller the suitcase, the more orderly everything has to be.
Likewise, atoms and molecules of nanometer-scale matter have to be highly ordered to fit in such a small space. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.
“The new phase is possible because the nano-size of the disks wouldn’t allow disorder due to properties no one has characterized before,” said Naumov.
The more orderly the space, the more information — bits — it should hold. “It’s a new phenomenon,” Bellaiche said. “You can think of using it to make new, hugely increased memories.”
The researchers studied ferroelectric materials that possess so-called “spontaneous dipoles,” or charge separations. Spontaneous dipoles help create medical ultrasound and naval sonar images, and convert signals to sound in cell telephones.
Dipoles are also the key to storing information, but researchers know little about how they behave in nano-scale materials. “Our goal is to explore the possibility of using a single nanoparticle to store one data bit,” Naumov said.
Dipoles in nanomaterials form a new state when the temperature falls. This surprising discovery led the researchers to use computer simulations to determine what happens to nanorods and nanodisks when they reach this state.
The phase creates a stable “toroid moment,” a circular rotation like a vortex or tornado. Movement in one direction represents a “1″ bit. An opposite rotation represents a “0.”
Toroid moment storage in nano-particles would be a true quantum leap in the area of data storage, the researchers say.Tightly packed dipole particles interact strongly with one another, while nano-particle vortices do not.
“This eliminates the ‘cross-talk’ problem. You can compact the materials very densely,” Naumov said. With each rotating particle representing a bit of information, increased particle density yields increased data storage.
“We know that in principle this new finding can increase the memory capacity using nanoparticles, but we don’t yet know how long it will take to make the technology reality,” Fu said. “It’s a new direction in which to point people.”
The team’s findings recently appeared in the journal Nature (March 2005)
Source: Sci-tech today
