3D optical disc stores 1TB of data

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 30 Jul 2008 at 08:48

US scientists claim to have created an optical disc capable of storing data in three dimensions, boosting the capacity of DVD-sized discs to one terabyte.

Today's optical discs store and rewrite data on one or two layers, limiting the available storage capacity to 50GB for dual-layer Blu-ray discs.

However, a team from the University of California claim it's possible to create hundreds of layers on a single optical disc, pushing storage to 1TB and beyond.

The disc is comprised of a material called polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), which comprises dye precursor molecules and light-sensitive photoacid generator molecules, according to a report on Arstechnica.

When exposed to an ultraviolet photon, the photoacid generators break down to form a strong acid, which turns the dye precursor molecules into a fluorescent dye, which is used to store data.

The Californian team were able to create 200 layers of data using the materials, each capable of storing around 5GB each - like a regular DVD.

However, the team claims it can go much further using 405nm diodes to record a Blu-ray disc's worth of data on each layer. "Results show that bit dimensions are further reduced, which enables future recordings of 5TB disc capacities by recording 25 GB/layer," the team's research paper claims.

Sadly, there's no indication of when this technology might arrive on the market.