Overlapping beams will enable 1000 terabyte DVDs so the NSA may need less space to hold the Yottabyte of data

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CSIRO (austrialian research) have developed three-dimensional optical beam lithography with 9 nm feature size and 52 nm two-line resolution in a newly developed two-photon absorption resin with high mechanical strength. The revealed dependence of the feature size and the two-line resolution confirms that they can reach deep sub-diffraction scale but are limited by the mechanical strength of the new resin. Our result has paved the way towards portable three-dimensional maskless laser direct writing with resolution fully comparable to electron beam lithography.

The researchers showed how to break this fundamental limit by using a two-light-beam method, with different colors, for recording onto discs instead of the conventional single-light-beam method.

Both beams must abide by Abbe’s law, so they cannot produce smaller dots individually. But we gave the two beams different functions:

* The first beam (red, in the figure right) has a round shape, and is used to activate the recording. We called it the writing beam
* The second beam – the purple donut-shape – plays an anti-recording function, inhibiting the function of the writing beam

The two beams were then overlapped. As the second beam cancelled out the first in its donut ring, the recording process was tightly confined to the centre of the writing beam.

This new technique produces an effective focal spot of nine nanometers.

The NSA is building a monster datacenter in Utah that will hold one Yottabyte of information.

Instead of two cabinets filled with terabyte hard drives, they will be able to have one petabyte DVD. It will be about 10,000 times more compact and use less energy to power and cool.

With 10,000 times the density the NSA could go beyond yottabytes to brontobytes.

1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
1024 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

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