New memory components add dimension!

New-generation DVD-ROM drive to break out of two dimensions and to increase capacity to 140 times, even when compared to modern disk Blu-ray. Up to 7.2 terabytes.
Conventional DVD and Blu-ray store information in the manner of a vinyl phonograph records, on a two-lane, with the only difference being that the use of shorter-wavelength laser provides the Blu-ray pack it tightly. Developers are also working on similar systems used to record and read a few layers, at times increasing the capacity of the disk. But should this stop?
Working in Melbourne researcher James Chong (James Chon) says - it is not necessary. Together with colleagues he suggests a more complicated laser system in order to add a new dimension of disks for storing and reading data, thereby increasing storage capacity at once in the many tens of times. A system using a range of different wavelengths and directions of polarization of the laser beam itself is not that hard. Main difficulty - in a material medium that can serve her a decent pair.
After some hesitation, the authors decided to use the idea for this purpose, gold nanorods of different sizes and different orientations. On such a surface, such as data entry is as follows: when the laser beam incident on the polarization of certain of them, he podplavlyaet only the nanorods, whose direction coincides with the direction of polarization, the rest is left no trace, like their laser "sees". Then you can change the polarization - and work with other nanorod orientation. As a result, in the same area code can support multiple completely independent data sets.
Similarly, the gold nanorods and sensitive to the wavelength of the laser beam: the beam of a certain wavelength is best acts on the nanorods with a certain ratio of length to diameter. This adds "new dimensions". Depending on the number of used polarization directions and wavelengths on the same site it is possible to encode has a plurality of parallel arrays of data. To read enough to use the same polarization and wavelength of the laser beam, but of lesser intensity, which would not have melted nanorods.
Authors of the idea created a prototype of such a system, using two alternative directions of polarization, and three different wavelengths, and managed to "pack" 140 GB of information in 1 cm 3 of media. The calculation shows that even at this density, disk size of a standard DVD can hold around 1.6 terabytes of data. Well, if we add another one single direction of polarization, that number will increase to 7.2 terabytes.