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Individual Atom Memory Created

Posted by chrisd on from the we're-all-individuals dept.

azav writes "University of Wisconsin-Madison Scientists have created "atomic scale" memory using individual atoms of Silicon." A cool photo can be found on the site as well.

5 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. repost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    .. not to be too repetitive, but this was posted only a month ago..

    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/0 8/0116255&mode=thread&tid=126

  2. Re:It a hoax... by Kredal · · Score: 4, Informative

    As a matter of fact, yes.

    Not all atoms are the same size. Remember what you learned about atomic weights?

    --
    Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
  3. This has more details by jukal · · Score: 5, Informative
    The article links to this article which describes better how it actually works.

    "Reading the memory consists of a simple, one-dimensional scan, because it is self-formatted into precise tracks. There is no need to search in two dimensions for the location of a bit. The signal is highly predictable since all atoms have the same shape and occur on well-defined lattice sites. That allows for a high level of filtering and error correction"

    "Writing is more difficult. While atoms can be positioned controllably at liquid helium temperature, that is much harder to achieve that at room temperature"

  4. Re:It a hoax... by kenthorvath · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, they are all rougly the same size, regardless of atomic weight. This is one of the interesting things about quantum mechanics and atomic physics. *All* atoms are between 0.5 and 2.5 Angstroms (1e-10 m)with Cesium being the largest (bigger than Uranium) and Nitrogen? being the smallest. Silicon isn't very large, however. This is partially because the electrons are so far away from a VERY tiny nucleus (remember the football field/grain of salt analogy).

  5. Journal article, and some calculations by FleaPlus · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a PDF of the real journal article available from Nanotechnology's site.

    In the article they say that their atomic memory has an energy density of 250 terabits per square inch (compared to 100 gigabits per square inch for a hard drive). A CD-ROM has 14 square inches of recordable area. If one were to use this technique on a surface the size of a CD-ROM, that would give:

    (14 square inches) * (250 terabits/square inch) / (8 bits/byte) = 437.5 terabytes

    Incredibly huge, but I'm sure there's a number of people who would still be able to fill it up.