Chinese researchers achieve storage density breakthrough via novel ferroelectric materials

Chinese researchers made a breakthrough in ferroelectric materials that promises to dramatically increase information storage density. Their findings were published in the journal Science on Friday.

The research team from the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully identified one-dimensional charged domain walls within a fluorite-structured ferroelectric material.

These walls are tiny, with both thickness and width measuring just a few hundred-thousandths of the diameter of a human hair. This discovery, notably, provides a scientific basis for developing next-generation ultra-high-density devices.

Ferroelectric materials are pivotal for future technologies in fields such as data storage, sensing and artificial intelligence. Storing information within these one-dimensional domain walls could result in a several hundredfold boost of storage density.

The theoretical limit is estimated at about 20 terabytes per square centimeter, which is enough capacity to store 10,000 high-definition movies or 200,000 high-definition short videos on a device no larger than a postage stamp.