US scientists are claiming to have developed a new memory storage technology that can enable 12,500 full-length films to be placed on a single DVD. Tom Russell, a leading expert on polymer behavior and director of the UMass Amherst Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, has developed a faster, more efficient way to produce defect-free thin polymer films with the smallest domains ever achieved and ordered in the densest way possible for any given size, to dramatically improve storage density.

The new technique should not only increase data storage volume, but will save months in manufacturing and open up vistas for entirely new applications, say Russell and Ting Xu, leader of the UC Berkeley team. The density achievable with the technology they have developed could allow the contents of 250 DVDs to fit on a surface the size of a quarter, for example, says Xu.

Their work was supported by the Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Science, the National Science Foundation-funded Materials Research and Engineering Center at UMass Amherst and the university’s Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing.

Story filed 23.02.09