The Chinese have proposed recording data in diamonds forever – the density will be 10,000 higher than on DVD

An article was published in the journal Nature Photonics in which scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei presented a high-density optical recording technology with the ability to store data for millions of years. One diamond optical disc, the size of a regular DVD, can hold 10,000 times more information than a DVD itself.

Image source: University of Science and Technology of China

Technologies for truly long-term data storage are still in their infancy. Perhaps the most advanced solution was the production of CDs with a backing made of pure gold. In general, optical storage devices have proven to be insufficiently durable, and alternative technologies in the form of holographic recording have simply died out. But attempts to create a capacious and durable digital information carrier continue. It could be quartz glass, DNA or diamond. Moreover, diamond adds to its high optical qualities the highest stability of the structure and, as a result, the promise of storing information longer.

According to Chinese researchers, a diamond media created using their technology will be able to preserve recorded information for millions of years. As for directly recording and reading data, ultra-fast lasers with a pulse duration of about 200 fs are used for this. The pulses encode data into the diamond’s atomic structure, knocking carbon atoms out of the crystal lattice. The number of knocked out atoms – the appearance of vacancies or “empty” points in the structure of the diamond carrier – determines the brightness of the response and carries information that can be extracted.

Today, recording data in this way requires complex and bulky laboratory equipment, but in the future, everything can be placed in a desktop recording device the size of a “microwave oven,” the developers are confident. Test recordings of Eadweard Muybridge’s famous 1878 series of “moving pictures” of a rider on a galloping horse showed the ability to record and read data onto the diamond with over 99% accuracy. Calculations show that this technique will allow recording at least 1.85 TB of data in each cubic centimeter of diamond media, or 10,000 times more than on a standard-sized DVD.

«In the short term, government agencies, research institutes and libraries specializing in data archiving and preservation will likely want to implement this technology,” the scientists believe.