Magnetised graphene could see a "million-fold" increase in hard drive storage

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

Scientists in the US have figured out how to magnetise large areas of graphene, which they say could revolutionise our current technique for storing data.

 

Graphene the wonder-material has got some pretty strange properties, but one of the most unexpected is magnetism. Over the past 10 years, researchers have been intensely investigating the various characteristics of this multi-purpose material - made from multiple stacks of 1-atom-thick carbon layers - and have only been able to explain its occasional magnetism though manufacturing defects or through the binding of certain chemical groups that give it this property.

 

 But making graphene reliably electromagnetic - and therefore usefully electromagnetic - has proven difficult. Until now, because a team from the US Naval Research Laboratory have just figured out how to achieve what they’re calling "a simple and robust means to magnetise graphene" over a large array of the material, and they do it using plain old hydrogen. 

 

The technique, which they’ve outlined in the journal Advanced Materials, involves sitting some graphene on a silicon wafer, which they will submerge in a pool of cryogenic ammonia and lithium for about a minute. They then add hydrogen atoms to the mix, which renders the graphene electromagnetic. "This method of hydrogenation gives us access to a much wider range of hydrogen coverage than previous methods allowed," one of the team, chemist Keith Whitener, said in a press release.

 

"I was surprised that the partially hydrogenated graphene prepared by our method was so uniform in its magnetism and apparently didn't have any magnetic grain boundaries," - Paul Sheehan

 

The technique is also adjustable - you can turn the magnetic strength up and down using an electron beam that can shave off hydrogen atoms when there are too many in the mix. It does this by breaking the chemical bond between the graphene and the hydrogen, which renders the graphene no longer magnetic. What this also allows is for "magnetic patterns" - which means data - to be written into the graphene structure. 

 

"Since massive patterning with commercial electron beam lithography system is possible, we believe that our technique can be readily applicable for current microelectronics fabrication,"

lead researcher and materials research scientist Woo-Kyung Lee, said in the press release. 

 

The team says that if you integrate their magnetised graphene into a new type of storage medium, it will result in

"a roughly greater than million-fold improvement over current hard drives". 

 

Related article 2 years ago on the forum : http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/12033-graphene-the-nano-sized-material-with-a-massive-future/

Source :  http://thestack.com/graphene-naval-research-million-times-hard-disk-storage-160315

[Eniqmatic]

Imagine the possibilities for expanding storage with this! Pretty interesting!

[slightlyjaded]

Nice trick, but at the moment way too expensive for consumer/prosumers. This looks to be solely in the realm of government spending at the moment.

[-TesseracT-]

I'm waiting on that petabyte HDD

[Mr PotHead]

Imagine the possibilities for expanding storage with this! Pretty interesting!

porn porn and more porn

[Si3Rra_7]

Finally i can torrent all of piratebay

[XTankSlayerX]

I'm going to need one of those for Star Citizen...

[qwertywarrior]

i wonder if we will reach optical computing/memresistor tech before we figure out of to solve graphene issues of mass production

[euniqe]

Well, it involves pure hydrogen atoms in its development so if this goes big - so too will Hydrogen-fuelled cars

 

Obviously the hydrogen industry needs to seriously gain some efficiency before either of these technologies can exist on a consumer level.

[megaemil]

Finally i only need one drive for my... ... ... Family pictures! Yes Family pictures!

[Doobeedoo]

Imagine seeing your C drive this massive heh

[deviant88]

Could or will ? 

Anyway we need performance drives,i personally dont need a million times fold more storage if it doesnt have at least 10-100 times fold performance of current SSD's at the same price,CPU's and controllers probably cant even handle such troughput,maybe PCIe 3 x16 conexion for such a drive will work.

[BURNINGJUNK]

Yes I can't wait to have a 40,000,000,000,000 Terabyte Phone!

[Techteen14]

That's incredible. My next phone MUST have 3 yottabytes of RAM and 64 yottabytes of ROM, please and thank you.

[duaegi]

I know this guy!!

He privately tutored me in organic chemistry when I was in school. I knew that he was doing research at naval research lab, but I never knew he was working on something so cool

[Tech_Dreamer]

soon NSA will need only one drive

[Tonylu1595]

soon NSA will need only one drive

Soon NSA will be able to record not just video and audio in regular quality, but in glorious 4k 60fps.

[patrickjp93]

And all of a sudden Solid State Storage looks a lot stronger! Unless of course HDD makers really think they can make platters with graphene layers on top or make them thinner, better compensate for warping, and spin them faster (less weight will mean the same power consumption as before).

[mr moose]

more storage? just in time for star citizen then.