News

posted on 19 May 2008 10:37

A Rensselaer Polytechnic student has invented a 3D magnetic nanomaterial that could be used as a disk surface recording layer and greatly increase storage capacity.

Unlike current 2-dimensional recording material, the new material uses free standing nanoscale columns of magnetic cobalt and non-magnetic copper in alternating layers. This has the potential to increase the effective arealo density of a hard drive.

The student, Paul Morrow  said: "... a read head sensor based on a small number of these nanocolumns has promise for increasing spatial sensitivity, so that bits that are more closely spaced on the disk can be read." This sounds similar in effect to bit-patterned media which better isolates small areas of magnetisation.

The discovery, together with an allied one dealing with a scanning tunnel microscope to measure magnetic fields in his new material, has been published in the journal Nanotechnology.

More here.

Rensselaer Polytechnic is in Troy, New York state, USA.

^{Picture credit: Rensselaer/Mark McCarty.}

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}