New Holographic Storage Medium Doesn't Shrink

Wiesel Werkstätte writes "Nature has an article reporting a new photopolymer suitable for long term holographic storage. previous materials are "read once" and they shrink and distort during the storage process. this new material, a combination of glass and plastic, can also be applied in thicker films." Which means that three-dimensional holographic storage is a tiny bit closer.

Comments

MMmmm

[Aggrazel]

All this talk about mediums and shrinks has confused me... I don't know if I need to see a Psychic or a Psycologist.

Designer Storage

[ndrw]

Do you all think this could be a good step towards "designer" storage systems? I'm thinking of esthetically pleasing shapes and colors for crystal structures, you could use as ornamentation. Will these holographic devices necessarily have to be cubicle? What about tetrahedrons? I wouldn't mind having a pyramid of around 100 TB... mount in a base with wireless, and you've got a portable crystal ball.

Oh powerful and wise crystal tower, what is the average velocity of an unladen swallow?

What about long time storage - is glass a liquid?

[pinkNoise]

The new blend, basically glass riddled with holes, can be made into thick films and does not shrink -- problems inherent in previous materials for holographic data storage.

This is a very interesting technology, and it seems like some type of three dimensional optical storage would enable a storage capacity one or twe magnitudes larger than the ones used today.

It is usually said that glass is a liquid, and flows slowly, as seen in old church windows that are thicker at the bottom edge.
However, a bit of googling seems to suggest that glass flowing over time is an urban legend (church windows apparently just had an imperfect manufacturing process, and were installed thick edge down). Whether to call glass a liquid or solid seems to be a toughter question.

But aside from flowing, is there something else about glass that could make it unsuitable for longtime information storage?

We still need the optics....

[drin]

Having the storage is one thing, but AFAIK no-one has solved the optics problem as of yet. Having referent laser beams penetrate the storage medium at the multiple angles and speeds involved for useful data retrieval in a package suitable for long-term comsumer use is still an unsolved problem, is it not? So the creation of non-shrinking media is a good step forwards, but we're still a long way from opening our 'tray of what look like small ice-cubes and dropping one into [our] hi-fi system to provide the evening's soundtrack'. A long way indeed.... -drin

Re:I'm sure I saw something similar....

[infinite9]

Scientists had managed to store the data with relative ease, but couldn't retreive the data later on.

Is that like write-only memory?

Rimmer should check this out

[sphix42]

It may help boost his self confidence

Any different than a CD/CD-R/CD-RW?

[Svartalf]

Small flaws in the polymer coating or in the recordable layer (be they polymers (in the case of CD-R's) or sputtered metal films (in the case of CD-RW's)) will cause bit errors. How do they compensate for/know about the errors? Error correction placed into the stream written out to the disk. It'd be little to no different with holographic storage.