Atomic Memory For Data Storage

Atomic Memory Could Store US Library of Congress in a Dust Speck

Rebeccca Boyle | April 20, 2016

It's a memory so small you’ll forget where you left it. A new data storage system uses single atoms as computer bits, and could hold the contents of the US Library of Congress in a cube just 100 micrometres across – little more than a speck of dust.
Researchers have been trying for years to develop data storage using single atoms as bits – the 1s and 0s that form the basic units of information in a computer. Eight bits make up one byte, which can represent a single letter or number. Today’s hard disc drives use billions of atoms to represent a few bytes, and the average hard disc holds a trillion bytes.

"A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie. The ability to move single atoms, one of the smallest particles of any element in the universe, is crucial to IBM's research in the field of atomic-scale memory. In 2012, IBM scientists announced the creation of the world's smallest magnetic memory bit, made of just 12 atoms. This breakthrough could transform computing by providing the world with devices that have access to unprecedented levels of data storage. But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, the scientists moved atoms by using their scanning tunneling microscope to make … a movie, which has been verified by Guinness World Records™ as The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film." Source: http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/madewithatoms.shtml#fbid=CQkd3D0ffCs See also the link at the end of the film, which shows how IBM made this film or click on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA4QWwaweWA.

<more at https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030704-400-atomic-memory-could-store-us-library-of-congress-in-a-dust-speck/; related articles and links: http://www.cnet.com/news/ibm-creates-data-storage-at-the-atomic-level/ (IBM creates data storage at the atomic level. A new discovery by Big Blue researchers suggests that it's possible to store a bit of information in as little as 12 magnetic atoms. Today's disk drives require a million atoms to store a bit. January 12, 2012) and http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.02265 (A kilobyte rewritable atomic memory. F. E. Kalff, M. P. Rebergen, E. Fahrenfort, J. Girovsky, R. Toskovic, J. L. Lado, J. Fernández-Rossier, and A. F. Otte. arXiv:1604.02265 [cond-mat.mes-hall]. Submitted 8 Apirl 2016. [Abstract: The advent of devices based on single dopants, such as the single atom transistor, the single spin magnetometer and the single atom memory, motivates the quest for strategies that permit to control matter with atomic precision. Manipulation of individual atoms by means of low-temperature scanning tunnelling microscopy provides ways to store data in atoms, encoded either into their charge state, magnetization state or lattice position. A defining challenge at this stage is the controlled integration of these individual functional atoms into extended, scalable atomic circuits. Here we present a robust digital atomic scale memory of up to 1 kilobyte (8,000 bits) using an array of individual surface vacancies in a chlorine terminated Cu(100) surface. The memory can be read and rewritten automatically by means of atomic scale markers, and offers an areal density of 502 Terabits per square inch, outperforming state-of-the-art hard disk drives by three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the chlorine vacancies are found to be stable at temperatures up to 77 K, offering prospects for expanding large-scale atomic assembly towards ambient conditions.])>