In context: Near consumer electronics nowadays tend to employ solid-country storage, just that doesn't mean that the apply of HDDs halted. In applications where the price-storage ratio is the decisive cistron, HDDs remain the best solution, meaning that further developing the engineering science is certainly worth the try.

A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge Graphene Centre discovered that through the use of graphene, HDD storage chapters can be multiplied by 10. A team at the University of Exeter and other teams located in India, Switzerland, Singapore, and the Usa also helped with the discovery.

I of the master components of a HDD is the platter, which is usually covered in carbon-based overcoats (COCs) for protection. Through the continuous development of these layers, their thickness has reduced from 12.5nm to 3nm, resulting in a information density of 1TB per square inch.

Also read: Anatomy of a Storage Drive - Hd Drives

Past replacing between one and four COCs with graphene layers, researchers found that information technology'due south possible to increase data density tenfold. Afterwards testing graphene layers' friction, clothing, corrosion, thermal stability, and lubricant compatibility, they found that graphene "enables two-fold reduction in friction and provides improve corrosion and wearable than state-of-the-art solutions" and reduce corrosion by 2.5 times.

The HDD used for testing is based on some other fairly recent engineering used for high-density drives chosen Estrus-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR), which Seagate plans to utilise on its 20+ TB drives. In HDDs featuring HAMR, the recording layer is heated up to temperatures that COCs tin't handle. And then, by introducing graphene layers, researchers were able to increment information density by over x TB per square inch.

"This work showcases the excellent mechanical, corrosion and clothing resistance properties of graphene for ultra-high storage density magnetic media," stated Professor Andrea C. Ferrari, director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre. "Considering that in 2022, around 1 billion terabytes of fresh HDD storage was produced, these results indicate a route for mass application of graphene in cut-edge technologies."

Masthead credit: Denny Müller