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A team of engineers from North Carolina State University, led by Jagdish "Jay" Narayan, director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures, managed to develop a finger-nail size chip that can store one terabyte of information. Their latest invention is a nanostructured Ni-MgO System with a capacity of 20 HD DVDs.
At the nanoscale level, the university researchers added metal nickel to magnesium oxide. The material they received featured clusters of nickel atoms that measured less than 10 sq nm; for comparison - a pinhead has 1 million nm in diameter.
With their latest invention, engineers managed to cut the size of the chip by 90 percent. In addition, the new process, called selective doping, could also help boost fuel economy in cars and lead to more efficient production of energy through a significantly reduction of the heat generated by semiconductors, reports ComputerWorld.
The method of selective doping involves the adding of an impurity to a material with consequently changing properties. It would make it possible to create a new generation of ceramic engines that could resist twice the temperatures of conventional engines. According to Narayan, engines might show a fuel economy of 80 miles per gallon