A disc that has the same size and thickness as a standard DVD, but with 100 recording layers on each side separated by transparent films only 1 micrometer thick.

The researchers used a femtosecond laser to write data to a disk using a photoresist film doped with an emissive dye that accumulates when exposed to light. The film has high transparency and uniformity, and the emission phenomenon caused by aggregation provides a data storage mechanism.

The research, published in the journal Nature, is groundbreaking for the field of optical data storage, which has been stagnant for years.

• Almost a Chinese disc 1600 times more dataand almost 10 times more than a modern hard disk.
• The disk also has the advantage that it consumes energy only during reading and writing and not in standby mode, making it suitable for long-term data archiving.
• Scientists say the disk can last 50 to 100 years.

The technology is still in its experimental phase and needs further improvements in writing and reading speed as well as in the development of writing and reading devices. However, the Chinese disk has great potential in the age of artificial intelligence, which promises to produce large amounts of data that need to be stored and processed.

The drive could also help reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact of data centers, which currently account for a significant portion of the world’s electricity generation. Chinese scientists hope to bring their optical disks to market in the near future.