Posted on 06/11/2021 5:47:39 AM PDT by Red Badger
Graphene can be used for ultra-high density hard disk drives (HDD), with up to a tenfold jump compared to current technologies, researchers at the Cambridge Graphene Centre have shown.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was carried out in collaboration with teams at the University of Exeter, India, Switzerland, Singapore, and the US.
HDDs first appeared in the 1950s, but their use as storage devices in personal computers only took off from the mid-1980s. They have become ever smaller in size, and denser in terms of the number of stored bytes. While solid state drives are popular for mobile devices, HDDs continue to be used to store files in desktop computers, largely due to their favorable cost to produce and purchase.
HDDs contain two major components: platters and a head. Data are written on the platters using a magnetic head, which moves rapidly above them as they spin. The space between head and platter is continually decreasing to enable higher densities.
Currently, carbon-based overcoats (COCs) – layers used to protect platters from mechanical damages and corrosion – occupy a significant part of this spacing. The data density of HDDs has quadrupled since 1990, and the COC thickness has reduced from 12.5nm to around 3nm, which corresponds to one terabyte per square inch. Now, graphene has enabled researchers to multiply this by ten.
The Cambridge researchers have replaced commercial COCs with one to four layers of graphene, and tested friction, wear, corrosion, thermal stability, and lubricant compatibility. Beyond its unbeatable thinness, graphene fulfills all the ideal properties of an HDD overcoat in terms of corrosion protection, low friction, wear resistance, hardness, lubricant compatibility, and surface smoothness.
Graphene enables two-fold reduction in friction and provides better corrosion and wear than state-of-the-art solutions. In fact, one single graphene layer reduces corrosion by 2.5 times.
Cambridge scientists transferred graphene onto hard disks made of iron-platinum as the magnetic recording layer, and tested Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) – a new technology that enables an increase in storage density by heating the recording layer to high temperatures. Current COCs do not perform at these high temperatures, but graphene does. Thus, graphene, coupled with HAMR, can outperform current HDDs, providing an unprecedented data density, higher than 10 terabytes per square inch.
“Demonstrating that graphene can serve as protective coating for conventional hard disk drives and that it is able to withstand HAMR conditions is a very important result. This will further push the development of novel high areal density hard disk drives,” said Dr Anna Ott from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, one of the co-authors of this study.
A jump in HDDs’ data density by a factor of ten and a significant reduction in wear rate are critical to achieving more sustainable and durable magnetic data recording. Graphene based technological developments are progressing along the right track towards a more sustainable world.
Professor Andrea C. Ferrari, Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre, added: “This work showcases the excellent mechanical, corrosion and wear resistance properties of graphene for ultra-high storage density magnetic media. Considering that in 2020, around 1 billion terabytes of fresh HDD storage was produced, these results indicate a route for mass application of graphene in cutting-edge technologies.”
Reference: “Graphene overcoats for ultra-high storage density magnetic media” by N. Dwivedi, A. K. Ott, K. Sasikumar, C. Dou, R. J. Yeo, B. Narayanan, U. Sassi, D. De Fazio, G. Soavi, T. Dutta, O. Balci, S. Shinde, J. Zhang, A. K. Katiyar, P. S. Keatley, A. K. Srivastava, S. K. R. S. Sankaranarayanan, A. C. Ferrari and C. S. Bhatia, 17 May 2021, Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22687-y
Techy Pingy!.........................
That’s a lot of porn.
What about max RPM?
I’ve miles and miles of files
Pretty files of your forefather’s fruit
And now to suit our great computer,
You’re magnetic ink.
Seems pointless. SSD is the future. Moving parts are obsolete.
Flying cars and Nuclear fusion...................
So that means they can now almost store all the criminal acts by Hillary
These would be great for backup storage. As far as using them for PC’s and laptops, SSD’s are the only way to go IMO.
At this point, I don’t care much about density. 1TB is enough for me. What I care about is access time. For this reason, I much prefer SSDs and will never go back to magnetic drives again.
“one terabyte per square inch.”
That 1 inch square has a trillion bits. Each 1-bit square would be a millionth of an inch on each side.
Unbelievable but I suppose true.
One BYTE = 8 BITS, so 8 Trillion BITS.
But that's what it is NOW.
The graphene coating multiples that by 10, so TEN TERABYTES per Sq/In!...............
It’s just the beginning of the potential of this type of hard drive using graphene but what if in a couple of years, SSD drives made with the technology start appearing...or a similar hard drive with equal access times...
Imagine 10TB at SSD access speeds....that’s the logical progression...
I purchased a new laptop a couple of months ago and you’re right SSD is the way to go, I have a couple of 2TB portable drives I carry as backup devices, but nothing beats the speed of the SSD right now, especially on boot up, turn on the laptop and be working in under 30 seconds is a wonderful thing..
A lot of the bigger servers and back up solutions I build for my clients use a mix of drive architecture.
SSD’s have their limits. Predictive failure is based on read/writes instead of platter revolutions.
Still waiting for someone to come up with data storage based on electron spin or some other quantum-level stored energy potential.
And Cold fusion?
It means you can accumulate more clutter, which you will never use. Occasionally I weed through my hard drive and delete anything I have not used for 3 years.
Now the search engines are so good, it is crazy to store info on disks.
Moody Blues fan, eh!
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