Mobile Computing

Nanodot technology is a form of information storage that could be used in the future. Nanodot technology today can store over one hundred times more data than today’s hard drives. The nanodots are billions of little magnets which can switch polarity to represent a binary unit of data (for example, a single digit — 1 or 0 — of a binary numeral).

A researcher at North Carolina State University has developed a computer chip that can store an unprecedented amount of data — enough to hold an entire library’s worth of information on a single chip. The new chip stems from a breakthrough in the use of nanodots, or nanoscale magnets, and represents a significant advance in computer-memory technology.

“We have created magnetic nanodots that store one bit of information on each nanodot, allowing us to store over one billion pages of information in a chip that is one square inch,” says Dr. Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and author of the research.

The breakthrough is that these magnetic nanodots are made of single, defect-free crystals, creating magnetic sensors that are integrated directly into a silicon electronic chip. These nanodots, which can be made uniformly as small as six nanometers in diameter, are all precisely oriented in the same way — allowing programmers to reliably read and write data to the chips.

The chips themselves can be manufactured cost-effectively, but the next step is to develop magnetic packaging that will enable users to take advantage of the chips — using something, such as laser technology, that can effectively interact with the magnetic nanodots.

The research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, was presented as an invited talk April 7 at the 2011 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco.

NC State’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering is part of the university’s College of Engineering.

ScienceDaily 29 April 2010. 9 May 2010 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/04/100428110802.htm>.

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