National Taiwan U Breaks CD Storage Capacity Barrier
- By Paul McCloskey
- 06/05/07
Researchers at National Taiwan University have made a breakthrough in optical storage technology, a process that can boost the capacity of a single compact disc to 150 gigabytes to 200 gigabytes, university spokespeople said.
A standard CD usually has a capacity of 650 megabytes to 700 megabytes, while a mass production DVD can provide 4.7 GB to 17 GB storage capacity. DVDs with up to 27 GB capacity have been developed recently.
The new CDs, using a process called nano-class super-resolution optical near-field structure (Super-RENS), can record data with a write-in interval as small as 90 nanometers, compared to an 800 nm interval of the conventional CD and 400 nm of DVD, according to Tsai Din-ping, a professor at NTU's Department of Physics.
"It is the key to much greater capacity, " said Tsai. "A CD with Super-RENS can easily beat hundreds of CDs or tens of DVDs in terms of data stored."
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About the Author
Paul McCloskey is contributing editor of Syllabus.