SCIENTISTS AT Trinity College, Dublin are pioneering innovative ways to store data, allowing up to 10 times more data to be kept on a computer hard drive without increasing its size.

The Trinity-based Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices is collaborating on the project with Western Digital, a major player in hard drive design and manufacture.

In this recent advance, Prof John Donegan’s team in the School of Physics at Trinity College has developed a system that uses a laser to heat a tiny area, 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

This is much smaller than previously possible and allows data to be stored at higher densities and with improved durability and robustness, according to the Trinity research team.

The Science Foundation Ireland-funded centre and Western Digital are now perfecting the technique, and developing new intellectual property.

“Two PhD students involved in the project are currently visiting Western Digital in California to try and refine this technology,” says Prof Donegan.

Magnetic recording is the standard technology for data storage, including computer hard drives. It stores each bit of data as a different pattern on a magnetised material. By increasing the temperature of the magnetic material at the moment when information is recorded, more data can be stored. This is called heat-assisted magnetic recording, which can store data more efficiently.

The challenge has been to “make the optical spot as small as possible”, says Prof Donegan.

Dr Diarmuid O’Brien, executive director at the centre, said, “This project is exploring science which has the potential to transform the way in which data is stored worldwide.”