Salt enables six times the storage capacity for snail-unfriendly hard drives

Salt: sure, it’s possible you’ll use it to cure meats to your latest solar-powered circumnavigation . But hold onto your kippers, Magellan, because Singaporean scientists have found that sodium chloride — ordinary table salt! — also can dramatically increase storage capacity. You spot, typical hard drives have randomly-arranged magnetic grains, which enable data density of about 0.5 terabit per square inch. But a high-resolution e-beam lithography process, aided by our buddy NaCl, arranges the grains in a tighter, more orderly fashion, upping the density to a few.3 terabits per square inch. Called nanopatterning, this method enables a 1TB drive to carry 6TB without additional platters; it also works with current manufacturing technology, meaning no expensive upgrades. If that’s got you dreaming of a better-capacity future, hit the source link for more glorious technical details. We’ll alert you, though: the images of luscious, bee-stung lips stop here.

Source

This post is tagged: circumnavigation, lithography process, manufacturing technology, singaporean scientists, storage capacity