Inkjet printers can print data by placing mixtures of fluorescent dye molecules in small spots on epoxy surfaces. Credit: American Chemical Society.
New strategies are required to preserve information for longer periods of time with less energy consumption as the world's data storage requirements grow. Researchers from ACS Central Science report on a data storage method that uses mixtures of fluorescent dyes. These dyes are deposited onto epoxy surfaces in tiny spots using an inkjet printer. Each spot contains binary information, which can be read using a fluorescent microscope.
The current data storage devices, including optical media, magnetic media, flash memory and flash memory, last for less than 20 years and require a lot of energy to keep the information safe. Scientists have looked into using different molecules such as DNA and other polymers to store information at high density without power for thousands of years. These approaches have limitations due to factors like high relative costs and slow read/write speed. George Whitesides, Amit Nagkar, and other colleagues sought to create a molecular strategy for storing information that is high in density, has fast read/write speeds, and is affordable.
Seven fluorescent dye molecules were chosen by the researchers, which emit light at different wavelengths. The dyes were used as bits for American Standard Code for Information Interchange characters (ACSII), where each bit is either a "0" of a "1" depending on whether a particular color is present or absent. To encode the first section in a seminal research paper written by Michael Faraday (the famous scientist), a sequence of 1s and 0s was used. To place the dye mixtures on tiny spots on an epoxy surface where they were covalently bound, the team used an inkjet printing printer. They then used a fluorescence microscope for reading the emission spectra and decoding the message. The fluorescent data could easily be read 1000 times without any significant loss of intensity. Researchers also showed that the technique could write and read Faraday's image. Researchers claim that the strategy can read at 469 bits per second, which is the highest reported rate for molecular information storage methods.
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Further information: Storing Information and Reading Information in Fluorescent Molecules Mixtures, ACS Central Science (2021). Storing and reading information in mixtures of fluorescent molecules, (2021). pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.1c00728 The authors acknowledge funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Researchers acknowledge equity interests and a board seat in Datacule, Inc. Journal Information: ACS Central Science
