A team of scientists from the University of Manchester have made a breakthrough in the field of data storage: as a storage media can be used chilled molecules.

As you know, the basis for the functioning of most modern hard disks is magnetism. Magnetic grain size of 10 to 20 nanometers is able to encode 1 bit of data. Changing its polarization “North-South” or Vice versa, they take the values 1 or 0. Memory effect in which the material saves the information received after the disconnection of the magnetic field, is called magnetic hysteresis.

However, when attempting to further reduce the size of the media, scientists are faced with a serious problem. It turned out that individual molecules are not able to magnetic hysteresis, until they reach very low temperatures of the order of -259 C. S. the Researchers from Manchester have solved this problem, using the element dysprosium. The metal from the lanthanides group capable of hysteretic -213 gr. C., so that its molecules are much more suitable for data storage. Currently, scientists want to increase this even more — up to -196 C. With that will allow you to use as a chiller for this system the storage of conventional liquid nitrogen.

Storing information in molecules is capable of producing a revolution in the data centers, allowing you to store 25 TB of data in a piece of matter the size of a coin. This system will be more energoeffektivnee compared to current.

Today, such technology is extremely popular. Suffice it to say that the Internet giant Google for the last three years has invested more than $ 30 billion in building new giant data centers around the world.

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