Using diamonds as 'eternal memory cards'

American scientists have found a way to permanently store the amount of information equivalent to hundreds of DVDs in a diamond as small as a grain of rice and thinner than a sheet of paper.

Photos of physicists Einstein and Schoerdinger encoded and stored on diamonds. Photo: Carlos A. Meriles/Siddharth Dhomkar

This is a data storage technology based on defects in diamond crystals, according to the New York Times. A few nitrogen atoms can be inserted into the middle of the diamond's carbon crystal lattice structure. Destroying a carbon atom next to the nitrogen creates a space that can store data.

From this idea, a group of physicists at New York University, USA used lasers to encode and read data in these small gaps. They have properties similar to magnets - pulling or pushing electrons when illuminated by laser.

When they need to write data, they use a blue laser to add electrons to the gaps and a red laser to take electrons out, which correspond to the binary values ​​0 and 1. The process of reading the data is similar to a computer reading binary numbers, but here the light represents the presence or absence of electrons.

"Unlike DVDs, which can only record data on a single 2D plane, this diamond technique can store data on multiple planes, like a stack of DVDs," said Jacob Henshaw, a member of the research team.

Currently, a diamond the size of a grain of rice can store as much information as hundreds of DVDs. In the future, physicists may be able to increase this to the equivalent of millions of DVDs or more.

In addition, data stored in this way can last forever. With current magnetic hard drives, each time new data is accessed and written, its durability will gradually decrease and it will completely fail after 5-10 years.

The defects in the diamond crystal lattice do not change over time, meaning the data stored in it is preserved forever.

“There’s no way you can change it. The data is there forever,” said Siddharth Dhomkar, lead author of the study.

But data storage veterans like Jon Toigo, CEO of Toigo Partners International, remain skeptical about the technology, saying that only people who work in laboratories are familiar with the new storage technology, and that diamonds are always very expensive, even for imperfect diamonds.

“It will probably take 10 years for this technology to be widely used,” he said.

According to the researchers, the $150 synthetic diamond was the cheapest in their experiment.

“The larger the diamond, the more crystal defects there are to store information,” says Henshaw.

In addition, the research team also said that this data storage idea can also be used on any material with crystal defects similar to diamonds.The study was published in the journal Science Advances on October 26.

According to VNE