Slashdot Mirror
Titanium Oxide For High-Density Optical Storage
Stoobalou and other readers sent along word of research out of Japan, using a new crystal form of titanium oxide for high-density data storage — promising discs that store 1,000 times more data than Blu-ray does today, up to 25 TB. The material transforms from a black-colored metal state that conducts electricity into a brown semiconductor when hit by light, at room temperature. Titanium oxide's market price is about one-hundredth that of the rare element that is currently used in rewritable Blu-ray discs and DVDs. The material is cheap and safe, and is already being used in many products ranging from face powder to white paint. The researchers successfully created the material in particles measuring as small as 5 nanometers in diameter.
http://www.redorbit.com.nyud.net/news/technology/1869698/new_disc_could_hold_a_thousand_times_more_data/
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Are there any projections/estimates related to how stable this media would be when used for long-term archival storage?
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
The full 1000x potential won't be extracted straight away, we may see this technology in the next generation x2 or x5 the density. Now that Big Content has found a reason for more capacity with 3D, and a reason to make your existing movie collection obsolete, they will be looking for the sucessor for blu-ray 3-4 years down the track (because honestly it hasn't taken over from DVDs yet).
Interestingly in CD-ROM's heyday it wasn't uncommon for a PC to have a smaller hard drive than the amount of data that would fit on a CD-ROM. About the time DVD-ROMs were out I suppose hard drives were only a little larger. Blue-rays were fraction the size of a hard drive when the format spec was finalized (2005). Now hard drives are 20-40x larger than a blu-ray disc.
Carelessly extrapolating from the trend I predict we might not see this technology in widespread use until a common consumer hard drive is past the 25TB mark.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
TFA and TFS both refer to "Titanium oxide" which typically means either TiO or Ti2O3 (Ti in either II or III states). However, both TFS and TFA also assert that the "Titanium oxide" is used in sunscreen and suchlike, which implies it is Titanium dioxide, TiO2 (Ti in IV state), not Titanium oxide.
Most likely, TFA should have referred to Titanium dioxide, as this is also a semiconductor in crystalline state.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Titanium oxide isn't used for pigments - titanium dioxide is.
Buh. After reading about terrabit cube storage in 1994 http://bit.ly/cf4ufr [new scientist], I didn't upgrade my 3.5" floppies for years ... now I'm old, cynical about every article like this and my removable storage devices don't go past 32GB.
Come to Australia so we can strip search you and rob you of your internets, pr0n, rights and freedoms.
The point.
Why again do we need another slow optical disc medium? The times of those are clearly over.
Until that thing comes out, USB sticks are going to be 25 TB too. And much smaller. And not prone to scratching, sunlight, bending, dust, etc. And for everything else there is HDDs/SSDs.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.