1 Terrabyte Optical Disk Data Storage

The forthcoming TeraDisk (developed by Mempile) promises to leave Blu-ray in its wake by offer a massive 1TB (1000GB) of space on a regular sized (CD/DVD) optical disk.

How it this possible? Existing optical media records and reads data on semi-transparent layers; a CD uses just one layer, whilst Blu-Ray uses up to eight. The layers are restricted to a certain depth because as the light passes through, it becomes distorted and unable to read/write.The TeraDisk uses 200 layers, each storing 5GB of data. The disks are made from the same Plexiglas material used in other disks so the support will stay the same; it is only the read and write technology which will be new.

“Teradisk uses traditional chemical synthesis along with advanced quantum mechanical calculations and cutting-edge photophysical laboratory experiments to design molecularly-engineered nonlinear optical chromophores”

In laymen’s terms, the chromophores which are injected into the layers change their chemical structure upon the two-photon interaction with red laser. This change causes the two-photon fluorescence signal to modulate without affecting the liner optical properties of the material. Thus allowing for massively multilayer data to be accessed on what appears to be a regular optical disk

The molecules have been optimized not only for their two-photon response, but also for other desired capabilities such as data lifetime, cost, chemical stability, and processability (for manufacturing).

Developers say the new technology will be cheap and should be available to the public in 2010.