High-capacity optical long data memory based on enhanced Young’s modulus in nanoplasmonic hybrid glass composites

Emerging as an inevitable outcome of the big data era, long data are the massive amount of data that captures changes in the real world over a long period of time. In this context, recording and reading the data of a few terabytes in a single storage device repeatedly with a century-long unchanged baseline is in high demand. Here, we demonstrate the concept of optical long data memory with nanoplasmonic hybrid glass composites. Through the sintering-free incorporation of nanorods into the earth abundant hybrid glass composite, Young’s modulus is enhanced by one to two orders of magnitude. This discovery, enabling reshaping control of plasmonic nanoparticles of multiple-length allows for continuous multi-level recording and reading with a capacity over 10 terabytes with no appreciable change of the baseline over 600 years, which opens new opportunities for long data memory that affects the past and future.Storing and reading data for long periods of time is of huge interest. Here, the authors demonstrate long optical data memory with nanoplasmonic hybrid glass composites. They show continuous multi-level recording and reading with a capacity over 10 terabytes with no change of the baseline over 600 years.