Kal-El Shared More than his Son, Krypton Tech is Here

Hitachi has developed a glass-based data storage medium that is highly heat and water resistant, capable of holding data for hundreds of millions of years, and says it may be able to bring it to market by 2015.

The company's main research lab has developed a way to etch digital patterns into robust quartz glass with a laser at a data density that is better than compact discs, then read it using an optical microscope. The data is etched at four different layers in the glass using different focal points of the laser. The prototype quartz glass storage device measures just two centimeters (0.8 inches) square and just two millimetres (0.08 inches) thick, and consists of four layers of dots, which can hold 40 megabytes per square inch, which is approximately the same data as a music CD.

Researches are now developing new solutions with more layers which they say shouldn’t prove a problem. Hitachi researcher Kazuyoshi Torii said.

Now although not new, this is the first commericialized version of this concept.  The very first appearance of this technology was announced in May of last year, In the paper

“Radially polarized optical vortex converter created by femtosecond laser nanostructuring of glass”

by  Beresna,  Gecevičius,  Kazansky, and Gertus

In this paper, they demonstrate the generation of optical vortices with radial or azimuthal polarization using a space variant polarization converter, fabricated by femtosecond laser writing of self-assembled nanostructures in silica glass. In short, they scratch glass at the Nano level to be read by microscopes.  In the first figure, The setup for femtosecond laser direct writing. The right side is the Microscope images of the polarization converter in the bright field and crossed polarizers. The left side shows the diameter of the circle, 1.2 mm and the radial lines emerging from the center of the structure are due to finite step size in the writing process, which results in the visible segmentation of the structure.

The figure (right),  Color online Modeled near and far-field top and middle and measured bottom intensity distributions after the polarization converter for incident linear polarization a and for left handed circular polarization i.e., azimuthal polarization with the orbital angular momentum l=1 is generated  at different angles of polarizer 0° b , 45° c , 90° d , 135° e . White arrows indicate incident polarization state. With control on how this can be laid out, one can easily see how permanent data structures can be formed in the crystal.

As for Hitachi flavor of this, they have not decided when to put the chip into mass production but in the near future it might be used to store government, museums and religious organisation data, says Hitachi. "Initially this will be aimed at companies that have large amounts of important data to preserve, rather than individuals," said Tomiko Kinoshita, a spokeswoman at Hitachi's main research lab.

Hitachi said the new technology will be suitable for storing "historically important items such as cultural artifacts and public documents, as well as data that individuals want to leave for posterity."  Kinoshita said the company will need at least three more years to commercialize the technology, but is currently envisioning a system where customers send their data to Hitachi to be encoded. Hitachi has succeeded at storing data 40MB per square inch, above the record for CDs, which is 35MB.

The company has tested the durability of the quartz glass it uses and determined that it will last for "hundreds of millions of years." It said samples held up to two hours of exposure to 2000-degree-Celsius heat in an accelerated aging test.

Hitachi said it first conceived of the idea of storing data by etching it into quartz glass in 2009, but read and write times remained an issue. The company uses tiny dot patterns to store bits, and has recently developed a way to etch 100 dots at a time, greatly improving the write time.

The company is developing the technology in conjunction with a research lab at Kyoto University.

Now what hasn't been mentioned in all the hub-bub, is that now we will have data storage impervious to Electromagnetic Field (EMF) pulses.  Which usually wipes out all electronics. In short,  post Nuclear attack proof.  So, pretty soon you can store the family photos in pristine condition for millennia to come, wow, that would be super, man....

Source(s)

• “Radially polarized optical vortex converter created by femtosecond laser nanostructuring of glass”, by Martynas Beresna,^1,a_ Mindaugas Gecevičius,¹ Peter G. Kazansky,¹ and Titas Gertus^2; (1)  Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom; (2)  Altechna Co. Ltd, Konstitucijos 23C, LT-08105 Vilnius, Lithuania; Received 11 January 2011; accepted 27 March 2011; published online 16 May 201.
• R. Dorn, S. Quabis, and G. Leuchs, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 233901 (2003). 
• D. Pohl, Appl. Phys. Lett. 20, 266 (1972). 
• ]Z. Bomzon, V. Kleiner, and E. Hasman, Appl. Phys. Lett. 79, 1587 (2001). 
• M. Beresna, P. G. Kazansky, Y. Svirko, M. Barkauskas, and R. Danielius, Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 121502 (2009). 
• Y. Shimotsuma, P. G. Kazansky, J. R. Qiu, and K. Hirao, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 247405 (2003). 
• V. R. Bhardwaj, E. Simova, P. P. Rajeev, C. Hnatovsky, R. S. Taylor, D. M. Rayner, and P. B. Corkum, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 057404 (2006). 

So “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;”

____________________________________________________________
About Rick Ricker

An IT professional with over 20 years experience in Information Security, wireless broadband, network and Infrastructure design, development, and support.
For more information, contact Rick at (800) 333-8394 x 689·