Every day, modern society creates more than a billion gigabytes of new data. To store all this data, it is increasingly important that each single bit occupies as little space as possible.
A team of scientists at Delft University in Netherlands managed to bring this reduction to the ultimate limit: they built a memory of 1 kilobyte (8,000 bits), where each bit is represented by the position of one single chlorine atom.
In theory, this storage density would allow all books ever created by humans to be written on a single post stamp. They reached a storage density of 500 Terabits per square inch (Tbpsi), 500 times better than the best commercial hard disk currently available.
The team used a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), in which a sharp needle probes the atoms of a surface, one by one. With these probes scientists cannot only see the atoms but they can also use them to push the atoms around.
The new approach offers excellent prospects in terms of stability and scalability. Still, this type of memory should not be expected in datacenters soon. In its current form the memory can operate only in very clean vacuum conditions and at liquid nitrogen temperature , so the actual storage of data on an atomic scale is still some way off.
