Imagine arranging ten trillion people in a space the size of a football field so that they are equidistant from one another and facing the same direction.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and UC Berkeley have done just this, but with polymers and on a microscopic scale-uncovering a technique for packing more information into smaller spaces.

The technique allows 250 DVDs' worth of information to be stored on a disk the size of a quarter, said Ting Xu, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of materials science and engineering and an investigator in the study.

The study, which was published in the Feb. 20 issue of Science, was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

Xu said the discovery could transform the microelectronic and storage industries by shrinking the size of data-storing devices such as DVD players and flash drives.

In the technique, a crystal is cut and heated to form a sawtooth pattern.

Polymers are laid on the crystal, where they self-arrange into an ordered pattern. Each resulting microscopic wire is then used to record computer data in binary language by magnetically storing either a "0" or a "1."

The technique can be used over large areas, whereas previous techniques were inefficient even for areas one micron by one micron.

It also squeezes bits to record densities in a highly ordered manner, said Thomas Russell, a professor of polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an investigator in the study.

"It's nothing new," Russell said. "But what is new is a unique combination of these different technologies that have been brought together. Technically, the industry could be doing it tomorrow."

According to Moore's Law, data storage capabilities double every 18 months. But this discovery shatters that trend, he said.

Although the most immediate application is data storage, this discovery could also be applied to solar cells, batteries and water purification, Russell said. The quality and size of video screens could also be vastly increased.

"The resolution that you can get with these things is three nanometers," he said. "You can't see that small. So I can magnify (the picture) and put it on the side of a building and you'd still have HDTV."

Researchers have been in contact with companies to apply the technique.

"I would say that this will see the light of day preferably within the next five years," Russell said.

Junior Eric Isaacs, president of the Berkeley Nanotechnology Club, said the technique creates exciting new possibilities in the field.

"As usual, scientists and engineers from UC Berkeley are leading the way in nanoscale science and engineering research," he said.

Tags: NANOTECHNOLOGY