Graphene used in industrial ultra-high density hard disk drives can increase performance by 10 times

2024-03-11

The Graphene Center at the University of Cambridge, UK, in collaboration with teams from the University of Exeter, India, Switzerland, Singapore, and the United States, has shown that graphene can be used for ultra-high density hard disk drives (HDDs), and its performance can be improved tenfold compared to current technology. The relevant results were published in Nature Communications.

Carbon based coating is a coating that protects the disk from mechanical damage and corrosion, determining the storage density of HDD. Currently, the coating thickness is about 3nm, which is equivalent to a data density of 1TB per square inch. Cambridge researchers replaced commercial carbon based coatings with 1-4 layers of graphene and tested friction, wear, corrosion, thermal stability, and lubricant compatibility. In addition to its incomparable thinness, graphene also possesses all the ideal characteristics of HDD coatings in terms of corrosion resistance, low friction, wear resistance, hardness, lubricant compatibility, and surface smoothness. In addition, Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) is a new technology that increases storage density by heating the recording layer to a high temperature. Currently, carbon based coatings cannot function at high temperatures, but graphene can. Graphene combined with HAMR can outperform current HDDs, with a data density of over 10TB per square inch.

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