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HGST (formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) says it will be able to double hard disk drive (HDD) density with self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting technologies.
The two technologies will allow HGST to create large areas of dense patterns of magnetic islands only 10 nanometers wide. These features are only about 50 atoms wide and some 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.
The company says self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting will have an enormous impact on nanoscale manufacturing, enabling bit-patterned media to become a cost-effective means of increasing data densities in magnetic hard disk drives before the end of the decade.
HGST’s discoveries in nanolithography overcome the increasing challenges associated with photolithography.
Long the preferred technology among the semiconductor industry for achieving successively smaller circuit features using traditional ever-shorter wavelengths of light, improved optics, masks, photosensitive materials and clever techniques, photolithography advancements have slowed as ultraviolet light sources have become too complex and expensive.
Self-assembling molecules use hybrid polymers, called block copolymers, composed of segments that repel each other. Coated as a thin film on a properly prepared surface, the segments line up into perfect rows.
The size of the polymer segments determines the row spacing. After polymer patterns are created, a chip-industry process called line doubling makes the tiny features even smaller, creating two separate lines where one existed before.
The patterns are then converted into templates for nanoimprinting, a precision stamping process that transfers the nanometer-scale pattern onto a chip or disk substrate.
HGST is the first to combine self-assembling molecules, line doubling and nanoimprinting to make rectangular features as small as 10 nanometers in such a circular arrangement.