Carbon Nanotubes Store Data Forever

Carbon nanotubes have shown the potential to help further the development in a wide range of technologies. Boasting structural, thermal and electrical properties like no other material on earth, carbon nanotubes could theoretically be used for building super strong architectural structures, vehicles, armor, clothing, and lighting speed electronics.

Carbon nanotubes could also become the solution in solving a data storage problem that haunts us to this very day, preserving our data. We simply cannot store electronic data much longer than 30 years, and considering how much of the world’s sensitive information, business transactions, history and medical records all rely on the electronic form of storage, data longevity has become a major factor for researchers to overcome.

But now, a team of researchers from the University of California has theorized an entirely new way of storing data, practically forever, using carbon nanotubes.

The proposed device would place a microscopic iron crystal inside a carbon nanotube. Then, by applying just few volts of electricity, the iron nonoparticle would move back and forth along the tube, registering a binary 1 or 0 depending on its position.

How Carbon Nanotubes Can Store Data Forever

Scientist claims that the durability of these materials means the date could be stored indefinitely, and due to the extremely minuet scale of the nanotubes, it could be possible to store up to 25 DVDs of info on a storage device the size of a post-stamp.

Although the method is just a theoretical solution for now, scientists are confident it will see practical applications in the computers of tomorrow, however there’s no word as to when exactly that might be.

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