Researchers Find Way to Put 1.6 TB on a DVD

From Tom's Hardware: With hard drives hitting 2 TB, our dual-layer DVD burners are starting to look mighty limited. While Blu-ray Disc burners will be making their way into high-end computers soon, it won’t be long until even 50 GB seems puny.

Researchers from Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology claims to have developed an optical recording technique that it says can place a a theoretical 1.6 TB on a DVD-sized disc. This is done by adding extra dimensions to the recording surface.

To be precise, the extra dimensions are the wavelength and polarization of light, which integrate with the familiar three spatial dimensions creates true five-dimensional recording within one volume.

According to the journal article from Nature, “The new system makes use of surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-mediated photothermal reshaping of a substrate of gold nanorods immersed in a polymer layer. Crosstalk-free readout is via two-photon luminescence. Immediate applications can be found in security patterning and multiplexed optical storage.”

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