Researchers from numerous universities and educational institutions, including the University of Cambridge and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, have succeeded in showing that graphene can be used to produce ultra-high-density hard disk drives (HDDs). That may lead to the development of ultra-high-density magnetic data storage — a big step up from the current standard of one Terabyte per square inch.
Advantages of graphene:
Researchers have found that graphene, in addition to its unbeatable thinness, offers all the ideal properties of an HDD casing: corrosion protection, low friction, wear resistance, toughness, lubricant compatibility, and surface smoothness. A single layer of graphene reduces corrosion by 2.5 times and multiple layers of graphene show excellent performance achieving up to three times higher usage.
During the research, 1 to 4 layers of graphene were grown using a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system and transferred onto cobalt alloys such as those used in today’s hard drive technologies. The researchers also transferred graphene onto hard drives made of iron and platinum to test a new magnetic storage technology that enables much higher storage density than currently available.
The researchers then concluded that graphene coatings, used with innovative technologies, should beat the performance of current hard drives by offering a density of 10 Terabyte per square inch or more.
“These results show the potential of graphene in the mass market”
“Demonstrating that graphene can serve as a shell for conventional hard drives and that it can withstand heating assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) conditions is a very important result. This will help develop novel high-density hard drives,” says Anna Ott of the Cambridge Graphene Centre, one of the authors of this study.
Mar García-Hernández, leader of the Graphene Flagship, states: “a jump in the data density of hard disk drives ten times and a significant reduction in the duration of use are essential to achieve more sustainable and durable magnetic data recordings. . Developments based on graphene technology are progressing at the right pace to achieve a more sustainable world.”
Andrea C. Ferrari, director of science and technology at the Graphene Flagship, adds: “This work shows the excellent mechanical, corrosion and resistance properties of graphene to use for high-intensity magnetic data storage. Considering that around 1 trillion Terabytes of new storage will be produced in 2020, these results show the potential of graphene in the mass market.”
