Open Competition 1 - Electronics and Photonics

High Performance Rewriteable Recording Media for Holographic Data Storage

Sponsor: InPhase Technologies, Inc.

• Project Performance Period: 11/1/2002 - 7/31/2005
• Total project (est.): $2,832,000.00
• Requested ATP funds: $2,000,000.00

More new information is expected to be stored in 2002 and 2003 than in all of previous human history, heightening the demand for technologies that can store more electronic data in smaller spaces and access it faster than ever before. Conventional magnetic and optical systems, which store data in two dimensions and recover it bit by bit, are reaching the limits of their theoretical data storage densities and access rates. Holographic technology -- in which laser light is used to record blocks of data as holograms throughout a volume of space -- could overcome these limits because it can store data in three dimensions and read out millions of bits at once. InPhase Technologies previously developed write-once holographic recording materials. This two-year project will develop and demonstrate the use of high-performance rewriteable holographic recording materials that can be reused up to 1,000 times. The challenge is to retain all the desirable characteristics of InPhase's existing holographic materials while adding a reversible imaging component. After optimizing the new material and characterizing the resulting media, the company will build a device to demonstrate recording and recovery of streaming digital video files. The goal is to achieve storage densities of 15.5 gigabits per square centimeter (100 gigabits per square inch) and data access rates of 20 megabytes per second, with the potential for an order of magnitude increase. The ATP funding, which is expected to accelerate the research by three years, is needed because the startup company's resources are dedicated to commercializing the existing write-once materials. In addition to offering a superior combination of ultrahigh storage densities and transfer rates, the proposed technology is expected to cost less and require less space and power than competing technologies. In addition, it can offer a physical layer of content protection (i.e., data embedded in the volume of the media rather than on the surface). If the technology is successfully developed and commercialized, it could compete in a $60 billion market for data archiving, consumer electronics, and mass market storage. Further it could offer a means for the United States to regain dominance in the optical data storage market. The technology also has applications in photonics and telecommunications.

For project information:

Dr. Lisa Dhar, (720) 494-7422
LisaDhar@inphase-tech.com

ATP Project Manager

Thomas Lettieri, (301) 975-3496
thomas.lettieri@nist.gov