Optical discs with large information capacity... and where they actually are!?

I have received recently OPN Optics & Photonics News journal and read a small reference to recent advance in large-capacity discs. In particular, Australian researchers at Swinburne University of Technology (Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia) have proposed a new type of optical disc that can store 1.6 terabytes of data.

Developed by professor Min Gu and colleagues, the technology uses the unique properties of surface plasmons in gold nanorods to take advantage of information in five dimensions: the three spatial domains, wavelength and polariza­tion. The nanorods, which are coated in polyvinyl alcohol and mounted on a glass substrate, can be selectively recorded in layers by laser light, due to their unique optical and photothermal properties. Min Gu and his team have recorded ten layers and believe up to 100 may be feasible, for a potential disk capacity of 7.2 ТВ.

We all hope that such discs can be used not only by military/financial institutions but for average users, too. Unfortunately, large-capacity discs are tend to demand highly precise equipment, or very special materials, or something else that makes a mass-production difficult or even impossible. Again, such researches are very promising, but for most of these projects are not commercially successful. For instance, many of us remember the Holographic Versatile Disc by Optware. There were many promising ideas, hopes and dreams, but in the end - the only one wiki's page...


Fig.1 Optware's Holographic Versatile Disc™ (HVD™) disc structure.

Fig.2 Read / Write system


Fig.3 Holographic Versatile Disc™ (HVD™) on which digital movies were recorded (left). The disc diameter of 12 centimeters is equivalent to those of CD and DVD.