Photographic film may yield storage breakthrough

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that the same silver-oxide film used in conventional photographic film may be used as a high-density optical-disk storage medium. By illuminating a 20-nanometer-thick silver-oxide film with a fine point of blue light at 515 nanometer wavelength, silver nanoclusters with as few as eight atoms are made photoactive. Longer wavelength light shined on the film can then be used to read the original photoactivity without destroying it. The nano-scale size of the write area raises the possibility of extremely high-density storage. Though this phenomenon had been noted before, this is the first time that it has been duplicated in conditions other than rare gas environments at extremely low cryogenic temperatures.

The source article is at eetimes.com.