Monday, December 07, 2015

[mxmomgzw] Sodium potassium chloride data storage

The ultimately dense data storage medium is bits stored as single atoms.

Start with a perfect crystal of (say) sodium chloride.  Sodium represents a 0 bit.  Substitute potassium for sodium to store a 1 bit at a given location in the crystal lattice.

Will this work?  Will the slightly different sizes of the potassium and sodium atoms cause the crystal to develop defects?  (Though this could be mitigated with techniques similar to avoiding DC offset when transmitting bits as electrical pulses.)

How can such a crystal be constructed?  Nanotechnology.

Sodium chloride and potassium chloride are water soluble so not ideal for durable data storage.  What are better crystalline materials?  Being able to substitute more than two atoms allows ternary and higher encodings.

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