New research leads the way to creating cheaper, more practical high-density optical storage
In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Wuhan University and the State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science have demonstrated the potential of Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR)-based two-dimensional nanostructures for optical storage.
The study, published in Optics Communications, provides another possibility for ultra-high density and high-resolution optical storage.
Optical storage technology has been developing rapidly recently, with an increasing amount of research focusing on multi-dimensional high-density storage. While three-dimensional storage can achieve ultra-high-density optical storage by stacking two-dimensional storage layer by layer, it has limitations. These include high manufacturing costs, large processing errors, and complex readout processes. As a result, the implementation of two-dimensional ultra-high-density optical storage has become an area of great interest.
Superior to Blu-ray
The research team, led by Zhidan Lei, Dekun Yang, and Yiduo Xu, used ‘plasmonic technology’ to realize ultra-high-density, low maintenance media, and long-life optical storage. They designed nano-scaled rotary gold square two-dimensional arrays to achieve ultra-high-density optical storage.
For angle-resolved LSPR nano-arrays, when the rotation angle of a single unit gold square nano-structure is 2°, the storage density was found to be 12.79 GB/cm2. This is a staggering 53.29 times greater than that of a single-layer Blu-ray disc. The researchers found that by varying the shape and size of the nano-structure, even higher two-dimensional storage densities could be achieved.
The findings of the study show that, with proper design, the density of two-dimensional optical storage can match or even exceed that of three-dimensional optical storage, potentially revolutionizing the way we store, archive and access data in the future.
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