Optical storage speeds up data processing

Researchers are developing a new type of optical memory storage unit that works with photons of light rather than electrons in standard magnetic storage devices.

Researchers at the University of Gothenberg are working on the Femtoterabyte project, which aims to make digital storage technology 10,000 times faster and 100 times smaller, while improving energy efficiency.

Alexadre Dmiriev, Femtoterabyte coordinator at the University of Gothenburg, said: “The fundamental possibility of using pulses of light to write and read information in magnets has been known for 20 years.

“Yet it remained unfeasible for building real memory due to the high laser powers needed, and large ‘tracks’ resulting from the fundamental limit for light focusing.”

Their new optical storage could accommodate the skyrocketing amounts of data being processed every day. The memory unit for the project would be a few nanometres in size – or just a single magnetic module – and bring storage density to tens of terabytes and operation speed for read-write into the THz range.

Short light pulses at the femtosecond scale (one millionth of one billionth of a second) interact with tiny amounts of the magnetic material. These are focused on an optical nanoantenna that concentrates light onto an incredibly small point, which reads and writes information into the nanosized memory units.

Operating such a unit at a very low optical power will disrupt the currently accepted magnetic storage industry roadmap, the university said, and offer a faster and more energy efficient way to store data.

Dmitriev added that Femtoterabyte is aimed to address challenges of being able to store and process information at the highest possible rate with the lowest possible energy consumption, while further ramping up data storage density.

The university’s work is being funded by the €3.7 million EU Future and Emerging Technologies program for fostering radically new future technologies.