By Tom Simonite, Technology Review
Current hard-drive designs are reaching their limit in data storage, but a new manufacturing technique could allow drive capacities to keep expanding. The current method of making the platters that store data inside hard disks has been refined so much that it won’t allow for further significant improvements. Fine lines: Polymer molecules assembled themselves into the regular pattern of 10 nanometer-wide corridors in the larger of these two microscope images, thanks to the use of a new coating that helps the molecules align correctly. The smaller image shows that without the coating, the polymers don’t form organized structures. A technique that enables the nanopatterned layers that store data in hard disk drives to assemble themselves has been improved to better suit mass production, and could enable disks that store five times as much data as the largest available today.
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