

BANGALORE: Karthik V Raman, a 27-year-old researcher with IBM , Bangalore, and alumnus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with his team, has engineered templates for molecular memory devices which could store data up to 1,000 terabytes per square inch. It's a good example of the convergence of computer electronics and molecular biology as has been envisaged for some time.

Once his technology hits the market in about ten years, it could mean a dramatic shrinkage in the size of portable storage devices. Over the years, from clunky floppy disks to pen drives, there have been huge improvements in storing data - smaller devices are able to keep large amounts of data. Entire movies are now being carted around in pen drives about the size of your little finger.

Currently, the maximum storage in portable devices is 700 gigabytes per square inch. "The current technology can go up to only 1 terabyte per square inch," Karthik said, adding that it could replace the current storage technology in tablets and portable music systems. You could perhaps store your entire archive of movies, songs, photographs and videos on just one device.

The research, which was his thesis for a doctoral degree at MIT between December 2010 and June 2011, has been patented by the Boston institution. The Bangalore lad, a student of the department of material science and engineering at MIT, shares the patent with research supervisor Jagadeesh S Moodera of the department of physics and Francis Bitter of the Magnet Lab, MIT.

Karthik worked on molecular spintronics for his thesis. This is a developing area where the spin of the electrons in molecules of organic material is used to store data. The molecules largely consist of flat sheets of carbon (which are attached to zinc atoms), according to MIT News.

These molecules were developed by chemists headed by Swadhin Mandal at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. Currently, molecular storage devices work best at about -20 degree celsius.

"More research & development needs to be done before it's commercially available. We need to solve som fabrication challenges before it becomes scalable but we now know how to go about it," said Karthik.

He added, "The main problem is funding. There's very less funding in the initial stages of research in India, however ground-breaking it may be," he said.

At present, there aren't many researchers in the world working to control single molecule and molecular scale to make memory devices from them. "I'm optimistic that many researchers will start contributing to this work and in another 10 years, the device will be commercially available," he said.

The idea

A magnetic molecule (which is one-thousandth times the thickness of a human hair) on a ferromagnetic surface can now store binary information (0 and 1) allowing a thousand-fold increase in storage capacity of current hard drives. The magnetic molecule can selectively filter electrons having a spin of one kind which is needed to read information.

