Towards data storage at the single molecule level

Over the past few years, the building blocks of storage media have gotten ever smaller. But further miniaturization of the current technology is hindered by fundamental limits of quantum mechanics. A new approach consists in using so-called spin-crossover molecules as the smallest possible storage unit. Similar to normal hard drives, these special molecules can save information via their magnetic state. To do so, they have to be placed on surfaces, which is challenging without damaging their ability to save the information. A research team from Kiel University has now not only managed to successfully place a new class of spin-crossover molecules onto a surface, but they have also used interactions which were previously regarded as obstructive to improve the molecule's storage capacity. The storage density of conventional hard drives could therefore theoretically be increased by more than one hundred fold, and data carriers could be made significantly smaller. The scientists have published their findings in the scientific journal Nano Letters.