Azerbaijan National Academy of Science

In the world of big data, there are limitations on how to store large volumes of information. Typical home-computer hard disk drives consume a lot of power and are limited to a few terabytes per drive. Optical storage media like DVD and Blu-ray are energy efficient and cheap, but storage densities are very low due to the planar nature of the discs and the ever-daunting optical diffraction limit. However, researchers have made inroads into developing a 3-D diamond chip that could store vastly more data than current technologies.

In a new study appearing in the journal Science Advances, physicists in the group of Prof. Carlos Meriles at City College of the City University of New York (CUNY) seek to circumvent data storage limits by exploiting the charge state and spin properties of the Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) center in diamond. The researchers have devised a memory bit that is no longer a diffraction-limited bump on the surface of a DVD, but instead an atomic-sized defect that can trap and release electrons at will with laser excitation. As proof of principle, the Meriles Group used optical microscopy to read, write and reset information in a diamond crystal with a two-dimensional bit density comparable to present DVD technology.

Here, the crystal is equivalent to a rewritable memory storage device with virtually zero data degradation over time, if kept in the dark. The researchers also provided a route to extend the storage capacity to three-dimensions without affecting already written data. They further demonstrated that it is possible to control the spin degree of freedom, unique to this system, using precisely shaped multi-color beams and radio-frequency sources to achieve bit sizes much smaller than the optical diffraction limit. The resulting storage densities for such a diamond chip would be hundreds of thousands of times larger than existing Blu-ray technology.

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