High Density Data Storage

MSE 460
Timothy Burks, Alyssa Harder, Rehan Javed, Liang Meng, Francis Yuen

Agenda
Proposal to MegaJoule Industries Market trends Data storage system
Magnetic Holography Electrochemical Nanoscale/Probe-based

Recommendations

Proposal
Why should MegaJoule Industries invest in high density data storage technology now?

PROFITS
The need for higher capacity data storage continues to grow Ample challenges leave room for innovations Opportunity to leverage MegaJoule Industries as dominant player in data storage field

Leverage in Industry
Become an industry standard in high density data storage Direct future R&D and commercialization to our advantage Early patents, research and industry expertise Early hold on market allows more freedom to target any end-user base Early leverage = More profits for MegaJoule Industries

Technology Background
1.E+09 1.E+08 Data Storage Capacity (kB) 1.E+07 1.E+06 1.E+05 1.E+04

1.E+03
1.E+02 1.E+01

1.E+00 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990 Year

1995

2000

2005

2010

Demand from data intensive applications, such as digital photography, high resolution video, archiving, etc., continues to drive the need for higher capacity storage and portability

Market Trends

Worldwide revenue for hard disk drives in 2010: 27.7B USD (Up 18.4% from 2009) Worldwide revenue for optical storage in 2010: 14.8B USD (Up 7.6% from 2009) Accounting for improving global economy
Sources: Ed Grochowski, IBM Almaden Research Center (Left); Coughlin & Associates (Right) http://www.connectorsupplier.com/tech_updates_MassDataStorageTrends_11-18-08.htm

Magnetic Data Storage

Alyssa Harder

Projected Areal Density

Superparamagnetic Limit:
Critical grain size
magnetic energy is 40-60x thermal energy

Perpendicular over Longitudinal Read/Write

Field increased up to 2x Grains have higher alignment

Patterned Media
Ordered array Magnetic islands Non-magnetic matrix Increased SNR 50-1000 grains per bit bit 0.1-10 microns Grain size 10 nm Sharp magnetic transitions Concerns: Fabrication Time/ Cost

Patterning via Ion Beams

Binary pattern reorganized by ion beam Change in order results in magnetization
Similar to bar magnet

Ion beam controllable to a few nanometers

Holographic Storage
Tim Burks

Holographic Storage - Outline

Technical Background Optics Advantages Critical Material Properties Materials Systems
Photorefractive Materials Photopolymers

Technical Background
Writing Process Reading Process

Optics
Data is transferred in pages Multiplexing
Shift Angular

Phase Many more

Advantages
High theoretical and practical storage densities and transfer rates
InPhase: 500 Gb/in2; 20 Mb/s IBM: ~ Tb/in2; ~ Gb/s (Theoretical)

Flexible system architecture Long shelf-life Associative Retrieval

Critical Material Properties

Optical quality Low light scattering Thickness Sensitivity M# - dynamic range
= (M#/M)2

Photorefractive Materials
Example: transition metal-doped LiNbO3
Electrons become trapped in impurity centers Creates a space charge region Changes local refractive index

Pros: Good optics, thickness Cons: Volatile readout, expensive processing

Gated Holography
Two electron traps exist
Shallow Deep

Sensitizer beam
Elevates deep e Off during read phase

Readout stability
Needs more research

Photopolymers
Example: AA/PVA
Photochemical Initiation Polymerization Local Refractive Index Change
Pros: Data stability, easy processing, high sensitivity Cons: Possible optical defects, hard to achieve large thicknesses

Probe-Based Data Storage

Liang Meng

High density storage

Maximum density of current data storage technologies
Limited by diffraction of laser in lithography Limited by superparamagnetic effects

Up to 4 Tbit/in2

STM/AFM: capable to image surfaces, as well as manipulate the structure or change the properties of materials down to the atomic scale

Probe-storage system
Thermomechanical probe-storage
Phase-change Probe Storage Ferroelectric Storage Magnetic probebased Storage Mechanism AFM tip in contact with a polymer (e.g. PMMA) substrate. The tip is heated, which softens the PMMA in the contact region. The local tip pressure then creates a pit.

406 Gbit/in2
Readback A heater beside the tip at 150300 C. When tip moves into an indentation, the heat transport through the air becomes more efficient, resulting in a change of the cantilever temperature

641 Gbit/in2

1.02 Tbit/in2

Device prototype
MILLIPEDE - large arrays of probes to performing read, write, and erase operations in parallel. Microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based x and y actuators to position the storage medium relative to the array of probe tips Front-end (AFE) chip to control probes individually Thermal position sensors to get the position of the microscanner
probe-based storage device prototype

Write and read demonstration

The track size 90 m 32 nm. Each track contained 5,300 symbols. Distance between adjacent symbols 16 nm. Effective areal storage density was 840 Gb/in2 error rate of approximately 10-4 After correction, the complete sector information was recovered.

Phase-change Probe Storage

Phase change material (Ge2Sb2Te5 ) can be switched rapidly back and forth between amorphous and crystalline phases by applying appropriate heat pulses. Use heated AFM tips instead of laser Switch time ~ a few nano seconds Energy consumption for phase change probe storage is very low. High density
400 Gb/in2

The crystalline bits are visible as little valleys in the AFM image because the density of the crystalline phase is higher than that of the amorphous phase.

Even higher density

0.4 Tb/in2 1.6 Tb/in2 3.3 Tb/in2

Rewrite

Erased

Rewritable

Tip engineering
High reliability of the probetips required
maintain nanoscale structural integrity while still being able to deliver current reliably
Worn tip

Platinum silicide (PtSi) tip apexes with encapsulation in SiO2

SiO2 encapsulation

Better wear and conduction properties than commercial PtIr tips

Bit sizes for electrical storage are not significantly affected by the encapsulation

Future of probe-based data storage

High areal density demonstrated. Some major issues have been addressed Promising to enter the archival data storage market
Higher device capacity at a much lower cost/ GB.

Recommendations
Multi-prong approach
Invest in commercialization of magnetic-type data storage Research in holographic technology to target consumers once supporting hardware becomes more viable Research in nanoscale probe-based system to integrate with hard drive type storage

Questions?