DRESDEN,GERMANY: Researchers have discovered a construct by which data storage more stable for a much longer period. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research found a way to pack cobalt atoms on a carbon-based structure that makes for greater density and magnetic stability, MIT’s Technology Review reports. Incremental improvements in data storage have thus far been predicated on ever-smaller magnetic cobalt particles arranged in a hexagon. That method has pretty much been exhausted. Leibniz researchers successfully employed a hexagonal carbon frame upon which the cobalt molecules can be arranged.
Cobalt is used because of the directional properties of its magnetic energy. Data is stored according to this orientation, which has a tendency to reverse every 10 years or so. The phenomenon is said to be mitigated by the manipulability of a substance’s magnetic field, of which cobalt’s is high. Thus, the attachment to using cobalt hexagons for magnetic data storage. Using the carbon-ring frame, the particle structures can be reduced by more than two-thirds and the magnetic reversal tendency stabilized, TR says.
The resulting construct could yield magnetic data storage that’s “1,000” times more dense than current models, the publication says, noting that researchers calculations haven’t been subject to real-world modeling.
-- Deborah D. McAdams
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