
Proceedings Paper
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Paper Abstract
We propose to develop a new method of information storage to replace magnetic hard disk
drives and other instruments of secondary/backup data storage. The proposed method stores petabytes of
user-data in a sugar cube (1 cm3), and can read/write that information at hundreds of megabits/sec. Digital
information is recorded and stored in the form of a long macromolecule consisting of at least two bases, π΄
and π΅. (This would be similar to DNA strands constructed from the four nucleic acids πΊ, πΆ, π΄, π.) The
macromolecules initially enter the system as blank slates. A macromolecule with, say, 10,000 identical
bases in the form of π΄π΄π΄π΄π΄. . . . π΄π΄π΄ may be used to record a kilobyte block of user-data (including
modulation and error-correction coding), although, in this blank state, it can only represent the null
sequence 00000....000. Suppose this blank string of π΄βs is dragged before an atomically-sharp needle of a
scanning tunneling microscope (STM). When electric pulses are applied to the needle in accordance with
the sequence of 0s and 1s of a 1 ππ΅ block of user-data, selected π΄ molecules will be transformed into π΅
molecules (e.g., a fraction of π΄ will be broken off and discarded). The resulting string now encodes the
user-data in the form of π΄π΄π΅π΄π΅π΅π΄. . . π΅π΄π΅. The same STM needle can subsequently read the recorded
information, as π΄ and π΅ would produce different electric signals when the strand passes under the needle.
The macromolecule now represents a data block to be stored in a βparking lotβ within the sugar cube, and
later brought to a read station on demand. Millions of parking spots and thousands of Read/Write stations
may be integrated within the micro-fabricated sugar cube, thus providing access to petabytes of user-data
in a scheme that benefits from the massive parallelism of thousands of Read/Write stations within the
same three-dimensionally micro-structured device.
Paper Details
Date Published: 5 September 2014
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9201, Optical Data Storage 2014, 92010A (5 September 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2060549
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9201:
Optical Data Storage 2014
Ryuichi Katayama; Thomas D. Milster, Editor(s)
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 9201, Optical Data Storage 2014, 92010A (5 September 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2060549
Show Author Affiliations
Masud Mansuripur, College of Optical Sciences, The Univ. of Arizona (United States)
Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9201:
Optical Data Storage 2014
Ryuichi Katayama; Thomas D. Milster, Editor(s)
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