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| 125GB Optical Disks Use Holographic Techniques -- A
Colorado Company by the name of "Inphase Technologies" (www.inphase-technolgies.com) has obtained
licensing rights from Lucent Technologies to develop a new method for storing data onto
plastic optical disks. Their technique spreads the information into the volume of the
plastic material instead of its surface. Their first product will provide 125GBs of data
per side of a disk. It will be able to read and write data at magnetic hard drive speeds.
A double-sided version will be able to store 250GB per disk. Such a disk could store over
50 full-length movies. Their goal over the next few years is to increase the data storage
density to 1000GBs and reach read/write speeds of 100MBs/sec. |
| Super Capacitor Energy Storage Devices -- A company named
Maxwell Technolgies (www.maxwell.com) in San Diego
has developed a full line of energy storage devices that operate as super capacitors.
Their line ranges from 5 farads to 2500 farads. Each device is rated at 2.5 volts. One of
their more popular 10 farad devices can light a red LED for over an hour. The energy
storage density of these devices is about 3 watt-hours per kilogram and about 84
watt-hours per cubic foot. Their goal is push the technology to about 15 watt-hours per
kilogram over the next few years. But, to be practical for electric vehicles, they will
need to exceed 100 watt-hours per kilogram. |
| Ethanol Fuel Cells for Laptop Computers -- Medis
Technolgies Ltd. of New York (www.medistech.com)
has introduced an alcohol based fuel cell, designed for cell phones and notebook
computers. The new device will extend the talk time on a cell phone or the operating time
on a notebook computer to as much as 15 hours. The system can be recharged in seconds with
a new fuel cartridge. They claim an energy density of 150 watt-hours per kilogram but also
expect the figure to exceed 450 watt-hours by the end of 2002. This figure exceeds the
conventional lithium-ion battery, whose density is only 150 watt-hours per kilogram. The
company expects to be able to scale up their technology to solve some of the energy
storage problems in electric vehicles. |
| Tiny Disk Drive for Cameras and Music Players -- A
Colorado company called Data Play (www.dataplay.com),
has developed a removable media disk drive that uses plastic disks the size of a quarter.
The tiny disks sell for about $10 each and can store 500MBs of data. They are finding
their way into cameras, music players and removable data storage devices for notebook
computers. Using compression techniques, the disks can hold about 10 hours of high quality
MP3 music or nearly a thousand photos. |
| Optical Storage Technique Stores Multiple Bits per Site
-- Ted Williams of Keele University in England claims to have developed a method to store
up to 2.3 terabytes (2,300 gigabytes) of data on a plastic surface the size of a credit
card. Such a feat equates to a data storage density of 86 gigabytes per square centimeter.
According to Mr. Williams, the system uses a unique metal alloy in a magneto-optical
system, which allows multiple bits to be stored for each memory site. If this technique
can be fully developed, truly massive storage devices will result. A double-sided CD
would, in theory, be able to store 40,000 gigabytes. |
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