5D storage technology will save 500TB on CD

Scientists from the University of Southampton have alreadyfor several years they have been working on the creation of a technology for ultra-dense data recording on glass using a laser. This technology, called 5D, allowed earlier, in 2013, to apply a text file of 300 KB onto a glass medium. Within two years, the technology was improved, and scientists were able to record and extract a digital copy of such popular documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the King James Bible and the Magna Carta.

Further development of the 5D data storage method andthe use of the latest laser technology allowed this year to conduct an experiment with recording and 100% accurate reading of 5 GB information per 1 inch glass sample. The researchers argue that the technology created will allow storage of up to 500 TB of information on a medium the size of a standard CD, which is 10,000 denser than recording on Blu-ray discs.

The technology was named 5D due to the methoddata storage based on recording with a femtosecond laser that emits incredibly short but powerful light pulses. As a result of the passage of the laser, tiny nanostructures are created inside the silica glass, which are characterized by three spatial coordinates, the intensity and polarization of the laser beam. These five characteristics allow scientists to call the technology a 5D data warehouse.

Unlike standard ways of storing dataon hard drives, the new 5D technology has increased resistance to high temperature, moisture, mechanical damage and magnetic fields. Such characteristics will allow in the future to create long-term repositories for national archives, museums, libraries or private organizations.

The main problem to be solved nowscientists work, is to provide an acceptable data recording speed with high density to obtain a technology that allows you to create commercial devices for 5D data recording.

The solution to this problem became possible withusing an optical phenomenon called near-field amplification, which allows nanostructures to be created with a few weak light pulses, rather than writing directly with a femtosecond laser. As a result, the researchers were able to write data at 1,000,000 voxels (three-dimensional pixel) per second, which equates to 230 KB of data, or more than 100 pages of text per second.

Source: newatlas