Comments on: Researchers unravel the secret to making cheap, high-density data storage

By: Dan Symes

Dan Symes — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 01:17:22 +0000

It’s irrelevant who develops products first. It’s a global economy. The inventor/developer will either sell the product or the rights to others. Global product development benefits the whole globe.

By: Jos Smit

Jos Smit — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:44:16 +0000

Looking at the comments above it seems I’m the only person that has no clue what this article is about. I don’t see how self-assembly has anything to do with data storage. And it’s also unclear to me how a smooth surface is the key factor for this. The third and fourth paragraph gives me some clues, but not even close to enough. Usually I mostly understand articles on this web site.

By: asiwel

asiwel — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 22:51:59 +0000

First of all, for A*STAR, it is interesting that “Peter Hart, Nils Nilsson and Bertram Raphael of Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) first described the algorithm in 1968″ (Wikipedia). So we invented that. I looked up the A*STAR agency in Singapore which “oversees 14 biomedical sciences and physical sciences and engineering research institutes, and six consortia & centres, located in Biopolis and Fusionopolis as well as their immediate vicinity” (their website). IT really does look like a very impressive organization with a distinguished Board of Directors, a full range of international credentials, and lots of folks trained in the West. Still the U.S. leads in photovoltaic research, for the time being anyway, and I certainly hope that we as a nation will “stay ahead” in this particular game!

By: asiwel

asiwel — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:14:21 +0000

Reading the open access paper, it looks like the TranSpin coating worked pretty well on surfaces that were pretty smooth to begin with. But even 5 coats of Transpin were eventually overcome by increasing surface roughness >5A. I thought it was pretty interesting how they set up the test surfaces’ roughness, beginning with glass (polished silcon or crystal) platforms and using magnetron sputtering to create other surfaces.

By: Editor

Editor — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 20:25:15 +0000

Yes, they use a coating called TranSpin (as explained in the open-access paper at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00617)

By: asiwel

asiwel — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:50:19 +0000

If an extremely smooth working surface is needed, it would seem that the very first “nanoassembly” problem would be to take a reasonably rough surface and “nano-coat” it such that the result, on one side – the exposed side -, is extremely even. Then build subsequent structures on that surface. Proteins that attach and then fold just enough to line up along the outer surface might be an example coating material. Of course, I am “out of my depth” here but it seems there are also ways of manipulating the physical size of molecules, the “size” of atoms and orbital radii of layers of electrons, etc., such that the surface roughness could be filled in smoothly at the nano-level.

By: Gorden Russell

Gorden Russell — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 17:15:14 +0000

Just imagine what it will be like for us if Singapore develops the self-assembling photovoltaic carbon nanocells first. We will become a third world nation. They will leave us behind in the dust.