Researchers claim nanotech breakthrough that could shrink storage by 500 times

The breakthrough technique, however, requires cooling to -200°C

Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands claims to have perfected a technique for data storage based on nanotechnology that is capable of writing data to disk atom by atom.

The technique would enable storage devices to be engineered about as small as it is possible, claim the researchers.

The team in the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at the university explained that they have build a device capable of storing around 1KB of data (8,000 bits) where each bit is represented by the position of one single chlorine atom.

"In theory, this storage density would allow all books ever created by humans to be written on a single postage stamp," said lead scientist on the project Sander Otte.

A storage density of 500 terabits per square inch has been achieved, according to the team, which is about 500 times better than the best storage tech that Seagate, Western Digital or any other company producing commercial data storage hardware is capable of achieving.

"The team used a scanning tunnelling microscope in which a sharp needle probes the atoms of a surface one by one. With these probes scientists can not only see the atoms, but use them to push the atoms around," said the university.

Otte likened the technique to a sliding puzzle game. "Every bit consists of two positions on a surface of copper atoms, and one chlorine atom that we can slide back and forth between these two positions," he explained.

"If the chlorine atom is in the top position, there is a hole beneath it. We call this a 1. If the hole is in the top position and the chlorine atom is therefore on the bottom, the bit is a 0."

The chlorine atoms are surrounded by other chlorine atoms, except near the holes, so they keep each other in place. This is why this method with holes is much more stable than methods with loose atoms and more suitable for data storage, claimed the researchers.

The atoms were arranged in blocks of eight bytes, mimicking computer memory, and each block has a 'marker' so that it can be identified. The marker can also indicate whether the block has been damaged in some way, potentially enabling a high level of scaling that can be ignored if some individual sectors are damaged.

However, Otte warned that the technique will take some time to perfect. "The memory in its current form can operate only in very clean vacuum conditions and at liquid nitrogen temperature (77°K, or around -200°C), so the actual storage of data on an atomic scale is still some way off. But through this achievement we have certainly come a big step closer," he said.

The researchers were inspired by the legendary physicist and lock cracker Richard Feynman, who challenged his colleagues in 1959 to engineer the world at the smallest possible scale.

In his famous lecture, There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, he speculated that if we had a platform allowing us to arrange individual atoms in an exact orderly pattern, it would be possible to store one piece of information per atom.