Silicon glass used for data storage for lifelong forever

Silicon glass 

                                        Radially polarized optical vortex converter created by femtosecond laser nanostructuring of glass has been created,by a team led by Professor Peter Kazansky at the University’s Optoelectronics research center, describe how they have u
sed nano-structures to develop new monolithic glass space-vari
 ant polarisation converters.

 These 
millimetre-sized devices change the way light travels through glass, generating ‘whirlpools’ of

Optical vortex generated using radial polarization convertor

 light that can then be read in much the same way as data in optical fibres. This enables more precise laser material processing, optical manipulation of atom-sized objects, ultra-high resolution imaging and potentially, table-top particle accelerators. Information can be written, wiped and rewritten into the molecular structure of the glass using a laser.
                   According to the researchers, at sufficient intensities, ultra-short laser pulses can be used to imprint tiny dots (like 3D pixels) called ‘voxels’ in glass. Their previous research showed that lasers with fixed polarisation produce voxels consisting of a periodic arrangement of ultra-thin (tens of nanometers) planes. By passing polarised light through such a voxel imprinted in silica glass, the researchers observed that it travels differently depending on the polarisation orientation of the light. This ‘form birefringence’ phenomenon is the basis of their new polarisation converter.According to the researchers it has a great advantage as it is capable of storing about 50GB of data and is not bigger than the microSD cards used in mobile phones.It is also lighter and 20 times cheaper than the existing methods of microscopy.They are making a 5 dimensional memory which can store the data on the glass and last forever.

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