Global demand for data storage is constantly increasing, driven by new technologies such as Big Data and the Internet of Things, as well as personal and enterprise storage. The hard disk drives that currently store the majority of the world's data have storage densities of just under 1 Terabit per square inch (Tb/in2). One of the promising technologies being researched for increasing the storage density is heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which uses lasers to heat individual magnetic grains that are just a few nanometers long. The method requires controlling heat and magnetism on a tiny scale, which has made developing HAMR very challenging.
In a new paper published in Applied Physics Letters, a team of physicists from TU Wien in Vienna, Austria, has developed simulations that realistically model the HAMR write process. Using the simulations, the researchers could independently control a variety of parameters that affect the storage density, and identify the circumstances under which HAMR can achieve its optimal storage density, which they found could be more than 13 Tb/in2.
"The resulting storage density of 13.23 Tb/in² would definitely be the highest density of any commercially available memory to date," coauthor Christoph Vogler at TU Wien told Phys.org. "With such a density, a conventional hard disk drive could have more than 10 times the capacity of today's devices, at the same size. The high density, along with the long-term stability of the stored data, would have a significant impact on desktop and enterprise drives."
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