Diamonds could store huge amounts of data read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/1441-diamonds-could-store-huge-amounts-of-data

The jewels could be used as a way to store vast amounts of data using atom-size flaws ordered in 3D arrays, according to a new study.

Diamonds may decorate some of the most coveted pieces of bling, but these precious stones could have more practical though admittedly less sparkly uses one day.

For decades, artificially grown diamonds, which are as hard as their gem-quality counterparts, have been used in industrial drills and saws and in durable coatings for biomedical implants. [Sinister Sparkle Gallery: 13 Mysterious & Cursed Gemstones]

Recently, scientists have explored creating defects in diamonds for potential use in quantum computers. Previous research suggests such machines could carry out more calculations in an instant than there are atoms in the universe.

Now, in a new study, scientists said these defects in diamonds could help store information, much like how microscopic pits in CDs and DVDs help encode bits of data.

"We are the first group to demonstrate the possibility of using diamond as a platform for the superdense memory storage," said study lead author Siddharth Dhomkar, a physicist at the City College of New York.

The researchers experimented with diamonds whose crystals contained a number of holes where carbon atoms should be. These imperfections are known as nitrogen vacancy centers, because nitrogen atoms are located near the holes, or vacancies.

The defects usually held electrons instead of carbon atoms, giving the features a negative electrical charge. However, the researchers could give these defects a neutral charge by shining lasers on them.

The change from negative to neutral altered how the defects behaved after they absorbed light: They went from fluorescing brightly to staying dark, the researchers said. This change is reversible, long-lasting and not disrupted by weak levels of illumination, the researchers added.

The findings suggest that diamonds could encode data in the form of negatively and neutrally charged defects, which lasers can read, write, erase and rewrite, the scientists said.

In principle, Dhomkar said, each bit of data could be stored in a spot on the diamond only a few nanometers, or billionths of a meter, wide. This is much smaller than any similar features used in data storage, and could give rise to superdense computer memories, he said.

METHODS

NV magnetic resonance and optical microscopy

For our experiments, we used a custom-made, multicolor microscope. A 13-mW helium-neon laser and a 2 W continuous-wave solid-state laser served as the sources of red (632 nm) and green (532 nm) light, respectively. Excitation in the blue (450 nm) light was provided by a tunable ultrafast laser (Coherent Mira) and a frequency doubler generating 120-fs-long pulses at a repetition rate of 76 MHz; the average power at 450 nm was 400 μW. All laser beams were coupled into a 0.42–numerical aperture objective, which also collected the outgoing sample fluorescence.

The illumination timing was set independently with the aid of acousto-optic modulators; a servo-controlled, two-mirror galvo system was used for sample scanning. Sample fluorescence ranging from 650 to 850 nm was detected after a dichroic mirror and notch filters by a solid-state avalanche photodetector.

Control of the NV electronic and nuclear spin was carried out via the use of MW and RF pulses produced by four signal generators R&S SMB100A, R&S SMV03, Agilent E4433B, and Tektronix AFG3102. A 25-μm-diameter copper wire overlaid on the diamond surface served as the simultaneous source of the MW and RF fields.

Upon amplification, the typical duration of an MW (RF) inversion pulse was 500 ns (30 μs). All magnetic resonance experiments were carried out in the presence of a 5.5-mT magnetic field emanating from a permanent magnet in the sample vicinity.

The magnetic field was oriented so as to coincide with the sample crystal normal, that is, the [111] axis. A pulse generator (PulseBlasterESR-PRO) controlled the timing of all laser, MW, and RF pulses. All experiments were carried out under ambient conditions.