Cuneiform-like digital storage tech quadruples data storage — uses three levels of indentation in polymer film

A team of researchers led by Abigail Mann at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia have developed storage tech that beats binary by being 4x denser. They used a new technique to store data on a polymer film by creating nanoscale indentations with a fine-tip probe that uses an atomic force microscope for movement. According to New Atlas, this technique is similar to how the Mesopotamians stored data on cuneiform tablets, but instead of using reeds and clay tablets, the team used a compound called dicyclopentadiene and sulfur to build the inexpensive polymer film.

CDs and DVDs work exactly like this—a polymer (like acrylic plastic) indented using a laser to store data. However, what makes this technology different is that the indent is made by a fine-tip probe, not by laser light. Furthermore, the polymer developed by the Flinders team is sensitive enough that the depth of each indent can be adjusted on the nanometer scale. According to the report, an area with no indent is 0, while cuts that are 0.3 to 1.0 nanometer deep would indicate a 1. If the indent is 1.5 to 2.5 nanometers deep, then its value is 2.

This means that this polymer could store ternary code, essentially quadrupling its storage capacity versus systems that just use binary. The polymer base is stable, allowing you to store data on it for a significant time, and you can write on it at room temperature. This means you do not have to expend large amounts of energy to write on it.

However, if you heat the polymer to 140 degrees Celsius for 10 seconds, all the data on it will be erased, allowing you to reuse it to store new data. The polymer has already been tested for four write-read-erase-rewrite cycles, proving its hardiness, although that might also mean that you cannot partially delete data stored on it.

“This research unlocks the potential for using simple, renewable polysulfides in probe-based mechanical data storage, offering a potential lower-energy, higher density, and more sustainable alternative to current technologies,” says Mann.

Although most of us use SSDs and hard drives for storage nowadays, the music industry has discovered the hard way that these media aren’t designed for long-term storage. That’s why researchers are still looking at other techniques for the safekeeping of our data, like an optical disk format with a 125TB capacity or this 5D data cube built out of silica glass.

There are still many challenges that face this new data storage technique, like how dust would affect them and how long they would last in storage. But as research continues on this front, we might someday find ourselves buying these “cuneiform drives” to help archive the massive amounts of data we generate in a year.