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Led by physicist Alex Zettl, a team of eggheads from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkley have demonstrated a form of nanotube archival memory capable of storing memory bits for a billion years, the researchers say.
The team put together a prototype device based on a nanoscale iron particle moving along a carbon nanotube like a shuttle. It measures about 1/50,000th the width of a human hair and was created in a single step pyrolysis of ferrocene in argon at 1,000C. Technical details aside, the team says the steps it took are compatible with today's semiconductor manufacturing techniques.
The end result is a device that can be written to and read from using conventional voltages, however remains years away from practical application. Nevertheless, the promise of long-lasting data retention could be huge for large-scale archival applications in the future.
Much more info here, along with the abstract (in PDF form) here.
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/paul_lilly
[2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/shuttle_nanotube_memory/
[3] http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361.NanoLet.9-Begtrup.pdf
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/innodisk_crams_128gb_teeny_tiny_ssd
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/samsungs_new_memory_chip_could_lead_32gb_dimms
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/new_nanomanufacturing_technique_could_create_crazydense_storage
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/data
[8] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/hardware
[9] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/storage
[10] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/news
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