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."

Comments

Every other week

[tliet]

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?

Re:Every other week

[Lord_Dweomer]

Actually, I had a similar thought, but it ended differently. Every other week we see an announcement like this. It makes me wonder if in ages past, people took innovation and technological advancement like this for granted. Did it feel the same to live in the Renaissance? Seriously, I don't even worry about whether my computer will improve by orders of magnitude by the time I'm ready to purchase my next one.....because I've grown so accustomed to the scientists always beening 10 steps ahead.

Whats more, the technological advances we've made have enabled us to exponentially pick up the pace of our research. Really makes you sit back and ponder what people in the Renaissance could have done if they had the ability to communicate like we do with the net.

If anybody knows of any articles/papers on this topic, I'd love a link to it.

Almost...

[ErichTheWebGuy]

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...

Interesting....but leads to other questions!

[Paul Townend]

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?

Opticom

[jabbadabbadoo]

A norwegian company (I think) has joined forces with Intel to provide polymer storage within the decade. Exiting stuff: Opticom

Is this optimal?

[Muad'Dave]

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.