Earlier this month, researchers from the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering demonstrated a technique that allows ones and zeroes to be made from atom-sized crystal defects, allowing for supreme density of “terabytes of bits within a small cube of material that’s only a millimeter in size,” per an interview with EENewsEurope.
This quote comes from UChicago PME Assistant Professor and lab overseer Tian Zhong, who also explained that “Within that millimeter cube [where we’ve made charged atom-defect gaps “one” and uncharged gaps “zero”], we demonstrated that there are about at least a billion of these memories— classical memories, traditional memories— based on atoms.”
Explaining some finer details of how all of this works, postdoctoral researcher and first listed author of the original paper, Leonardo França, stated, “We found a way to integrate solid-state physics applied to radiation dosimetry with a research group that works strongly in quantum, although our work is not exactly quantum. There is a demand for people who are researching quantum systems, but at the same time, there is a demand for improving storage capacity of classical non-volatile memories. And it’s on this interface between quantum and optical data storage where our work is grounded.”
In other words, this work is derived from two key sources. Firstly, existing radiation dosimeters, which measure how much radiation people are exposed to in hospitals and particle accelerators. Secondly, existing research on quantum storage storing qubits instead of traditional bits already sees crystal defects used to make qubits. However, the methodology there doesn’t tend to involve applying a charge to those defects.
We’ve also covered some other efforts at high-density storage on unconventional mediums before. Most relevant to this story is certainly the “5D memory crystals” touting the ability to achieve 360 terabytes in a 5-inch square…but considering the count of at least 2-3 terabytes within a 1 millimeter cube and the fact that 5 inches is about 127 of those…it would seem that these storage crystals are comparable if not even better than those. Unfortunately, no exact quote was provided on how many “terabytes” fit within a single millimeter cube.