Today the challenge in front of the global community is to increase the storage capacity of a hard disk without increasing the size of the disks.

Though the challenge looks difficult to achieve as the magnetic disks have already been exploited to the full potential yet some researchers at the NIST are working on a way to increase the storage using Nanodots.

Nanodots are magnetic particles that are just a few billionths of a meter across. These dots have a north and a south pole like a bar magnet. These poles can be switched from one state to another when a strong magnetic field is applied at these dots.

Currently the researchers have been able to develop Nanodots that are only 50 nanometers wide. These dots were fabricated using electron beam lithography to pattern multilayer thin films.

Now researchers are working on a technique so that they can further reduce the size of these nanoparticles. The only problem here is that the smaller the size of these particles the more is the magnetic field that is needed to switch them from one form to another.

Other research for increasing the storage capacity is to use lasers to heat and switch individual bits. We can reach an ultimate goal if we combine the laser technology with the Nanodots technology. Since heat reduces the amount of magnetic field that is used for changing the state of the Nanodots.

If researchers are successful in developing the technology then we can say that in future we will use HDDs that will be having one hundred times the capacity of today’s hard disks.

Via: physorg52741