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New Polymer Ideal For Secure Data Storage
aphexbrett writes "Clever geometry is the basis of a new material that is said to be ideal for secure data encryption and dense optical information storage. The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye. The material can hold four or more pieces of information in one spot--not just two as in binary optical data storage. And it opens a door to high-density three-dimensional optical data storage. Read a summary of the research over at C&EN News."
we see an announcement like this. Yet, at the shop, the harddrive is still king.
When do we get a 100 gb solid state disk for 50 dollars?
fifty comments about how good these will be for storing porn--in 3...2...1...
"The approach is really simple," says lead researcher Eugenia Kumacheva...... They start with colored colloids--polymeric nanospheres labeled with a dye--for example, an ultraviolet dye. Then they envelop the nanosphere, what Kumacheva calls the core, with a shell of another polymer labeled with a dye that has a spectrum entirely distinct from the first--say, ...blah blah blah!
... my arse!!! ;)
The approach is really simple
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
They're finding so many new alternatives to data storage, I'm surprised none of them have hit the market yet.
Since when do innovations become mainstream so fast ? If there's a decent demand for these products and a decent way to build them, they'll come sooner or later. But you can't just rush things like that, that'd be irresponsable, moreover concerning such a small market.
The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye.
Not quite as organized as a crystalline structure, but hell, it's almost the data crystal I and all of us have been promised for so many years...
bash: rtfm: command not found
In 1992 I remember reading Business Week's article on Hitachi's 5, 10 and 15 year plans - their 15 year research plan (ie 2007) included having atomic level data storage. Now it is 2004 and we seem to be some way off still. So maybe these micro-stores are trickier than people think.
It's great that it can store data in a three dimensional way, but the article doesn't seem to mention how robust such a material would be - will the dyes last for a long period of time, and if not, will some dyes fade before others?
Also, I would've liked to see some metrics to give an idea of the capacity such a material has in comparison with some of the recent stuff developed by, for example, IBM. Although I appreciate that it's early days at the moment.
Finally, making a reader for the material is one thing, but I imagine making a writer is an altogether trickier process....how do add and remove all these dye-polymer shells, or is the whole point to have a static, WORM-style data store?
Somebody wake me when there's a new data storage more cost effective than a traditional hard disk, because that's what 99% of us care about for mass storage.
*ZZZZZZZZzzzzZZzzzzzzZ*
A binary bit holds one piece of information, it has two states but is still only one bit (piece) of information.
You forgot:
"Cool! Hopefully, this'll be big enough to put Duke Nukem Forever on it! Oh, oh! And it'll have enough space for all those Phantom Console games I'll be downloading."
Seriously, though. Sometimes I wish researchers would just go voltron* with manufacturers and get the product out and surprise the crap out of all of us apathetic slashdotters awaiting our be-all-end-all data storage medium, as well as flying cars, hoverboards and the whole gamut of consumer electronics novelties that only have seven years left until they are supposed to have already been in use.
*yes, this is the first time the phrase "go voltron" being defined as a synonym for "team up" has appeared in print.
Back in the late 90's I read about a such discovery, that time with an optical medium that was accesible/writeable in 3d, no hardware parts etc. Then I never heard of it again. It is hard for one to understand how such inventions just dissapear after they are patented etc. since as we know from the evolution of humanity that there ain't a step forward (even a wrong step) that doesn't generate other steps forward (in the right manner) eventually..
My impression is that the peer from the extraterrestrial treaty is holding most of the patents already so we're prohibited to produce such things until we came up with a _really_ new universally-right idea.
gtkaml.org
So, how long until I can get a data-tooth?
Scotty: I notice you're still working with polymers.
Plant Op: *Still?* What else would we be working with?
Scotty: Aye, what else indeed?
(Prelude to the 'invention' of Transparent Aluminum in ST:IV)
And, when you're done, you can use it to make a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich, and take the data with you (well, for a day or two).
Yet Another Organic Storage Device..
As you may have noted, organic electronics and related topics are currently very hip. The problem is that these materials are very very instable. Great opportunity for secondary results, when your first hand research does not succeed. Just find some device the shows a somewhat reproducable instability and declare it as memory device.
Most of the published devices have endurances (write-read cycles) in the one or two digit order. Their data retention is measured in minutes. Reading/writing is so slow that you would need really really massive parallelism to get on par with HD, CD or flash. It could not be any further from a real application.
There is a difference between new research, something that can be practically implemented, and something that's ready for mass-market production. This is obviously not in the third category, but that doesn't make it uninteresting.
The venturi effect was discovered hundreds of years before the Wright Flyer was built, and it was 20 or 30 years after that before airplanes were useful for much. That doesn't mean the discovery and prototype (or specialized applications) were of no interest until commercial airliners appeared.
If you only care about deployable mass-market products, I suppose that's fine, but it's not worth posting about. If you can't tell the difference, or choose to ignore it, that's just obnoxious.
This process is not very useful for the proprosed applications of data storage. The main hurdle in that case is dynamic, accurate access to setting flags one way or another and then subsequently reading them. This is nothing more than a way to trap molecules in concentric shells of layers of polymer, a far cry from high performance data storage. Don't hold your breath yet.
You can't post an article of something that sounds as cool as a multi-colored onion lattice if you DON'T HAVE ANY PICTURES!! Jeesus christ its after midnight here on the west coast all I want is something cool to look at.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
as opposed to the certain failure after X rewrites that makes flash drives worthless for use on a swap partition(*nix) or partition containing a swap file(windows)
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
"New Polymer Ideal For Secure Data Storage... The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye..."
Come on, this is just security through obscurity. Somebody's going wonder why you keep an ever-expanding pile of onions next to your computer...
I don't see how this is ideal at all. It just seems like a multi-layered dye implementation that is convoluted by application to small spheres instead of to a flat surface. That is, why deal with nano-anything when you can just layer coats of dye on the disk itself? I don't see any way to get 3D storage out of it, either, because you have to get past any one dye layer to get to the next; no bit can be "under" another bit that blocks the same light. For that same reason, I don't see how you can even use a full bit at deeper layers unless all above layers are transparent to non-data colors. That is, with the top layer the light can either go through or be blocked (1 bit), but the second layer can only be reached when the first layer allows the light through, so two layers could seemingly only hold 3 bits, not 4 as the article claims, and the progression would be linear rather than to a power of two, as it also claimed. What am I missing, here?
As far as I can tell, the connection to "secure data storage" is fairly tenuous. Or at least, they don't mean what computer security people would expect by that phrase.
C&EN's summary says that such material could be used to make ID cards which show different images (data) under different light, and that this "would be nearly impossible to fake." As far as I can tell, what this means is that a card made with this material is easily distinguishable from one that isn't. This only makes faking hard if forgers aren't able to make the material themselves. There wasn't anything in the article specifically saying why that would be the case, but it's easy to imagine that needing esoteric equipment would raise the bar a bit.
Having only read the C&EN blurb, I can't confidently say that there isn't some more direct security connection that wasn't mentioned. But no obvious candidates are coming to mind. You could store various watermarks and signatures and whatnot, but you can do that with existsing systems too.
That's weird, because DVD's can be dual layered, in other words, more than one piece of data in one "spot" (2-dimensional spot that is). And so is the upcoming bluray discs. Of course, when DVDs were first developed, 10-layers was "planned". And there's FMD (prototypes only) that uses multiple layers but of fluorence not reflective optics. And there's the holographic storage technologies (which is truly 3D, unlike layering).
But what would happen if you mix this multi-dye technique with the existing layering technique....and blue lasers....man....just think of the p0rn possibilities! Each dye can store a different angle (or an "alternate ending").
The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye. The material can hold four or more pieces of information in one spot--not just two as in binary optical data storage. And it opens a door to
Dude! Man! I had this crazy idea! Like, we take this, like, lattice!! And then we, like, totally, make the lattice look like an onion!
Yeah!
Then, no.., Wait. I SAID WAIT!!!
Ok, yeah, I'm chillin' again... Sorry bro.
We take each layer and color that layer a separate color with a dye. Like, I'm trippin' now, but imagine the trip then. Whoa....
But that's not the coolest part. The coolest part is this -- instead of two bits, wait for it, wait... -- it holds FOUR!!! Awesome!!!
Yeah!
What? Whazat? I said what? Whatever, pass the refer, narc.
Jeebus.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Didn't they use something like this for storage in the first Star Trek? I seem to recall they different colours!
But does it run on Lin... *bang!*
If this technology is for real, then my first thought is to apply it to high-density storage devices. What is this "secure encryption and identification" mumbo-jumbo, as quoted from the article. Does this technology intrinsically lend itself to encryption? -- Or is it rather a new theoretical method of data storage?
The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres MMMmmmmm.... Lettuce and onion spheres. This will never work. Conventional hard drives, unlike this new storage medium, aren't likely to be eaten.
Free Image Hosting
Now for what I really want to know: how many Libraries Of Congress (LOCs) can I fit on a disk the size of a credit card?
A norwegian company (I think) has joined forces with Intel to provide polymer storage within the decade. Exiting stuff: Opticom
... you should be looking at pr0n instead!
It's simple, Joe Sixpack doesn't vote, he watches pro wrestling instead...
... with a few more details: Nanoparticle dyes boost storage
Eric Smalley
I'm certainly no chemist, but why would one choose to use a spherical structure that suffers from poor packing density? Similarly, why would you layer the distinct dye-bearing materials instead of coming up with a solution containing all of the dyes at once and depositing them in a solid block (or at least as a packing of cubes)? Instead of having discrete onion-shaped 'bits', you could have as many bits as your read/write mechanisms could handle, and each dye's contribution would be read from exactly the same spot in the matrix.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Polymer records? Someone tell Artie Fufkin!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
If they can arrange for 8 different wavelengths, each sphere becomes a byte. Then, if each sphere is 1000nm in diameter (which is a pretty large item in relation to the rest of nanotech, and therefore seems reasonable to manufacture), they could fit 100K X 100K = 10GB into a wafer 10cm by 10cm by 1um in size. Or, if you add another 10cm to the height you get a 1 petabyte cube that you can hold in your hand, like the one Arthur C. Clarke mentions in 3001. Even a little memory stick type of thing 3cm by 1cm by 1mm in size would hold 300GB, while something the size of a current HDD would be around 100TB. Not too shabby.
> how many Libraries Of Congress (LOCs) can I fit on
> a disk the size of a credit card?
What I want to know is why we still can't get the Library of Congress on any electronic medium at all. I want my two thousand DVDs now! I am sure a pony would be able to handle them...
Like this. It sounds a lot like using one of those everlasting Gobstoppers for data storage.
I'm sorry, but you must not be aware that you're addressing a society which has a level of consumerism roughly on par with a biblical plague of locusts.
OK, I felt like I was missing somethign at first, but from the look of a lot of posts at least I'm not alone. From what I can get from this, it's an improvement on typical (optical) data storage because instead of storing one bit per dot (which as far as I know CD's and even Hard drives do) this can store several bits per dot (limited by how many distinct dyes they can put together). Sounds cool. And the mention in the article of using this to store multiple images on the same space is pretty cool. But, where's the secure storage part come in? That image thing gives security cards as a possible use, but useful to printing ID cards != secure storage. Maybe they go into more detail in the first article, but lynx didn't like the PDF there, so I don't know yet...
Is there better info I've missed? Or is the write-up off ?
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
cool, can I wear it on my belt?
I knew that learning base 4 would pay off someday ... until the next iteration supports octal.
Lettuce of onionlike spheres.
Yuck.
emt 377 emt 4
Flamebait? For Christ's sake! A bunch of guys home guys having a little non offensive fun and it gets modded flamebait?!
Onion? What about parfait?
Parfait may just be the most delicious thing on the planet. Everyone loves parfait. You ever ask anyone "you wanna get a parfait" and they say "hell no, I don't like no parfait?
That's pretty cool. Thanks for the heads-up.