Australian university creates new disc technology

The format war over Blu-Ray and traditional DVDs could already be over, with Victorian researchers discovering a new format that contains 1.6 terabytes of storage on a disc – about 2000 times more than a regular DVD.

But despite reports the technology has been licensed to Samsung, research team member Min Gu at Swinburne University’s micro-photonics centre says no deal has been made – but a number of companies are interested.

Gu also says the discs should be commercially available in the next five to 10 years, and dismisses claims that such large discs would be of no interest to the consumer market.

“People say ‘if you buy one, you won’t buy another because they are so big’. The question is, is there a market? But I think the information for high resolution movies is just the start. Information requirements in the next few years will increase,” he says.

The detailed findings of the discovery were published just yesterday in Nature, a scientific journal.

The micro-photonics centre researchers invented a method of data storage that does not require a physically larger type of disc.  

On a normal DVD, data is written on three spatial “dimensions”, but the research team increased storage capacity by adding two new dimensions.

The team inserted gold particles onto the disc that react to light in unusual ways, allowing researchers to record huge amounts of data. The team also used the gold particles to write data at different angles, using projected light waves.

“So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other,” researcher James Chon told Itnews.com.au.

“This is a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in a single colour wavelength using a laser.”

It has been suggested that the discs would be first used in the medical sciences and biotech fields, where large amounts of data are required for files such as CAT scan and MRI results.

But the technology isn’t fool­-proof. Because the data is packed so tightly on to a normal sized disc, a fast, high-powered laser is needed to read the data at speeds found in commercial DVD players.

Currently, no such laser exists commercially, except large, industrial-sized equipment used in the experiment.

But despite the setbacks, the research team suggests the technology could be improved to reach 10 terabytes of storage, while costs could remain as low as five cents per disc.

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