News Release

World record data density for ferroelectric recording

Peer-Reviewed Publication

American Institute of Physics

This release is also available in Chinese on EurekAlert! Chinese.

College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- Scientists at Tohoku University in Japan have recorded data at a density of 4 trillion bits per square inch, which is a world record for the experimental "ferroelectric" data storage method. As described the journal Applied Physics Letters, which is published by the American Institute of Physics, this density is about eight times the density of today's most advanced magnetic hard-disk drives.

The data-recording device scans a tiny cantilever tip that rides in contact with the surface of a ferroelectric material. To write data, an electric pulse is sent through the tip, changing the electric polarization and nonlinear dielectric constant of a tiny circular spot in the substrate beneath. To read data, the same tip detects the variations in nonlinear dielectric constant in the altered regions.

"We expect this ferroelectric data storage system to be a candidate to succeed magnetic hard disk drives or flash memory, at least in applications for which extremely high data density and small physical volume is required," said Dr. Yasuo Cho.

In earlier experiments, the researchers had noticed one problem: When the data being written required that several consecutive marks be written next to each other, the written polarized regions expanded the normal diameter and coalesced to the point the bits were not distinct. Cho and Kenkou Tanaka then developed a method for anticipating strings of consecutive marks in the data and reducing the writing-pulse voltage by up to about 10 percent, which resulted in clear and distinct data marks.

While ferroelectric storage has the advantage of using only electric methods -- nothing magnetic or thermal -- to achieve its record-high density, Cho and Tanaka are well aware that many practical improvements would be needed for commercial viability. Such advances would include increasing the speed and accuracy of reading the data and developing a low-cost ferroelectric substrate.

Another risk is that existing data storage technologies continue to improve beyond the ferroelectric's capabilities. Disk drive maker Seagate, for example, has said it can envision achieving a density of 50 trillion bits per square inch.

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The article, "Actual Information Storage with a Recording Density of 4 Tbit/inch^2 in a ferroelectric recording medium" by Kenkou Tanaka and Yasuo Cho will appear in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

Journalists may request a free PDF of this article by contacting jbardi@aip.org

This work was supported by the Japanese ministry of education, culture, sports, science & technology.

ABOUT APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS

Applied Physics Letters, published by the American Institute of Physics, features concise, up-to-date reports on significant new findings in applied physics. Emphasizing rapid dissemination of key data and new physical insights, Applied Physics Letters offers prompt publication of new experimental and theoretical papers bearing on applications of physics phenomena to all branches of science, engineering, and modern technology. Content is published online daily, collected into weekly online and printed issues (52 issues per year). See: http://apl.aip.org/

ABOUT AIP

The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world's largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.


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