Western Digital have been hard at work creating the future of disk drive technology, claiming that they can double the storage density in future disk drives. With the use of nanolithography, a technique often reserved by semiconductor manufacturers, Western Digital will be able to make the features of the next generation of storage devices smaller than ever.
utilizing two impressive manufacturing techniques such as “self-assembling molecules” and “nanoimprinting” to create many times more dense patterns of magnetic storage that are only 10nm wide, Western Digital look set to be at the forefront of Hard Drive manufacturing for years to come.
“As creators of the original hard disk drive, we are proud to continue our heritage of innovation with today’s nanotechnology advance. The emerging techniques of self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting utilized at the HGST Labs will have an enormous impact on nanoscale manufacturing, enabling bit-patterned media to become a cost-effective means of increasing data densities in magnetic hard disk drives before the end of the decade,” – Currie Munce, vice president of HGST Research.
As advancements in photolithography become more and more complex and expensive over the years, as manufacturers not only try to make their components smaller and more dense, a new approach is required to enable the devices to be built to the next-gen specifications required by ever advancing computers hardware, but also to keep costs down as we can’t get stuck into a cycle of ever advancing and ever more expensive technology, especially when it comes to storage devices.
The next pattern printing technique will allow for a staggering 1.2 trillion dots per square inch, capable of storing one bit per dit and that is twice the density of hard drives that are manufactured today. While this technology might be a little out of reach for today’s devices it paves the way for hard drive manufacturing over the next ten years and should ensure that year on year we see an increase in storage capabilities of hard drives.
