New Method Could Store Massive Amounts of Data in Diamond Defects
Scientists use lasers to probe the gem's flaws, creating data storage that could potentially last forever
The history of civilization is really a tale of data storage. We’ve come
up with an endless list of solutions for passing along culture and
knowledge—from cave paintings to hard drives. But each solution is
imperfect: books can burn (though we have learned how to decode
some charred scrolls), monuments weather away and even magnetic tape
or discs will eventually
fail. While DVDs seem like a long-lasting solution, they’re
not. And they can only hold a few terabytes of information, but the
world’s technology produces exabytes
and zettabytes of data every year.
That’s the reason researchers are looking to
the second
(possibly third) hardest naturally occurring substance on earth to
hold all of our info: diamonds. Data encoded in diamonds would not
only last an indefinite amount of time, a tiny diamond half the size of rice
grain could hold the amount of 100 DVDs, researchers Siddharth Dhomkar and
Jacob Henshaw from the City College of New York write at
The Conversation. In the future,
this could jump to the equivalent of one million DVDs.
And the concept isn't just an idea. Dhomkar
and Henshaw recently encoded the data for two images, portraits of physicists
Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger in a diamond. The process of writing the
data is highly complex, but it is based on the very simple binary system, which
uses only two digits, one and zero, to represent information.
The system uses minute defects in the
diamond's crystal structure, which can be found in even the most visually
flawless of these gems. These imperfections occasionally create voids in the structure
where a carbon atom is supposed to sit. Nitrogen atoms also occasionally slip
into the structure. When a nitrogen atom is position next to
this missing carbon atom, a so-called nitrogen vacancy (NV) occurs, which
often traps electrons. Dhomkar uses these nitrogen vacancies as a substitute
for the binary ones and zeros. If the vacancy has an electron in place,
it’s a one; if it's empty, it's a zero. Using a green laser pulse, the
researchers can trap an electron in the NV. A red laser pulse can pop an
electron out of an NV, allowing researchers to write binary code within the
diamond structure. They recently described the process in the
journal Science Advances.
“There is a no way you can change it. It will
sit there forever,” Dhomkar tells Joanna
Klein at The New York Times. That is,
as long as it is not exposed to light, which will scramble the data.
In their experiments, Dhomkar and Henshaw
used a $150 industrially fabricated diamond so they could control the amount of
nitrogen vacancies in the gemstone. While the current method of encoding data
is similar to the way DVDs store information in two dimensions, according
to a press
release, the diamond has the potential for 3D storage as well,
giving it even greater storage capacity. And accounting for the spin state of
the electrons could help pack even more information into the diamonds.
“This proof of principle work shows that our
technique is competitive with existing data storage technology in some
respects, and even surpasses modern technology in terms of re-writability,”
Henshaw says in the release. “You can charge and discharge these defects a
practically unlimited number of times without altering the quality of the
material.”
Of course there is still a lot of work to be
done before consumers or IT departments start installing diamond drives, but
the technology or something similarly powerful—like DNA
storage—is needed to keep up with the world’s mounting tsunami of
information.
Source | http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-use-diamonds-store-data-180960932/?no-ist
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
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