A material with a data capacity of one thousand to one million times more than the current hardware used to store information was discovered by scientists in Florida.
This ability to store information seemed only a dream until recently. Now we are talking about the real possibility of having chips with 1 Exabyte of memory.
This exotic material, capable of storing such amount of information, is an exotic type of crystal. These crystals have structures that can store data at a nano scale. Usually, chips are made of layers of material that can be interpreted as values, but these strange crystals do it naturally due to their particular atomic structures.
At the same time, scientists at the University of Southampton, led by Martynas Beresna, have developed a laser to change the internal structure of the crystal.
Given that the molecular lattice shapes have an extremely miniature size, a lot of information can be stored in a relatively small crystal, even when each byte occupies several molecules. Somehow, this is a similar mechanism to that used to store data on a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, but using a three-dimensional support.
This technology could allow information to be securely stored for millions of years, but the bad news is that these exotic crystals need to be kept at 150 degrees below zero to have storing capabilities. The new challenge is to find materials that can serve in the same way but at room temperatures.
Victor Ramos is a Community Manager at Mijo! Brands of Mexico.
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