Sunday, February 04, 2007

US Patent 7170842 - Ferrofluid Memory Storage

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7170842.pdf

Scanning probe microscopy continues to receive a great deal of interest in high density memory applications many of which use phase change materials to store data. This patent from Hewlett-Packard uses magnetic particles imbedded in a fluid as a storage media for the scanning probes. Claim 1 reads:

1. A data storage device, comprising: a storage medium; nanometer-scaled data storage areas in the storage medium; an energy-emitting tip positioned in close proximity to the storage medium; a fluid medium positioned between the energy-emitting tip and the storage medium wherein the fluid medium comprises a ferrofluid; and particles contained in the fluid medium.

Labels: , ,