Although the 10-nanometer gap is minuscule, researchers could build a new type of optical reading and writing head using the technology, suggests Crozier. The magnetic storage industry, he points out, works with a similarly small gap between the head and medium. Using nano antennas to focus optical light is not an entirely new idea, Crozier says, but their work, published in Applied Physics Letters, is the first time an antenna has been integrated directly onto a laser. This offers an advantage in production because the light source and antenna are in one package. "It's extremely compact and easier to use because alignment with the laser and the antenna is all done in fabrication," he says. There's a lot of research activity to reduce the spot size of light, but it's especially attractive to the data storage industry, says Bae-Ian Wu, a research scientist in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Using a nano antenna is just one way to gain "super resolution smaller than the wavelength of light." But, he says, the Harvard researchers work "is very good in the sense that they are doing optical experiments to back up their theory, while some papers are only in the realm of theory." The Harvard scientists, he adds, "just did it." Crozier says his team is exploring fabrication techniques that can further decrease the spot size to 20 nanometers. They're also exploring alternatives to the gold metal that currently coats their nano rods. Silver, for instance, could focus light more efficiently than gold at the wavelengths used by the consumer electronics industry. |
Audio »
Share »
Digg this
Add to del.icio.us
Add to Reddit
Add to Facebook
Slashdot It!
Stumble It!
Add to Newsvine
Add to Connotea
Add to CiteUlike
Add to Furl
Googlize this
Add to Rojo
Add to MyWeb
Favorite
Print
E-mail
New Lasers Peer into Cells
10/30/2007
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Comments
deirdrebeth on 09/15/2006 at 11:43 AM
25
Monsterboy on 09/15/2006 at 12:01 PM
62
liverwort4600 on 11/03/2008 at 12:28 AM
1
The only reason we don't still use these is because rotating media tends to be inconvenient in size and storage amount. Plus it still HAS to compete with other things like flash drives. Neither the 12" laser disk or 8" Floppy would ever fit in a Laptop.
teuton on 09/15/2006 at 11:47 PM
1
parkehoover on 09/27/2006 at 11:26 PM
3
baatkarlo on 11/08/2006 at 6:29 PM
4
cwmack on 09/26/2006 at 7:24 AM
1
baatkarlo on 11/08/2006 at 6:34 PM
4
gmlobdell on 11/07/2006 at 3:45 AM
1
With this much space, you could store a two hour, HDTV 1080p movie completely uncompressed. A 1080p frame is 1920x1080 pixels, at say 32 bits per pixel, is 8.55 Mb per frame. 30 frames per second, is 216,000 frames in a two hour movie. Add in a few megabytes for multichannel Dolby/THX sound and the entire movie would be about 1.64 terabytes, well within the capability of this storage technology.
baatkarlo on 11/08/2006 at 6:23 PM
4
The point is it would take a new kind of device to play such a movie within two hours...or we'd have to get used to verrrryyyy slowwww motion movies and low pitched surround sound.
baatkarlo on 11/08/2006 at 6:15 PM
4
Also, does heat generation affect the antenna attritioning the gap in a short enough time to render it incapable of becoming mass production quality?
Typical mass production would be achievable provided mean time between failures is similar or better than current recording devices.
Sponge on 06/09/2007 at 6:01 PM
3