The next generation mass storage devices – Physical principles and current status

The amount of digital data today has been increasing at a phenomenal rate due to the widespread digitalisation service in almost every industry. The need to store such ever-increasing data aggressively triggers the requirement to augment the storage capacity of the conventional storage technologies. Unfortunately, the physical limitations that conventional forms face have severely handicapped their potential to meet the storage need from both consumer and industry point of view. The focus has therefore been switched into the development of the innovative data storage technologies such as scanning probe memory, nanocrystal memory, carbon nanotube memory, DNA memory, and organic memory. In this paper, we review the physical principles of these emerging storage technologies and their superiorities as the next generation data storage device, as well as their respective technical challenges on further enhancing the storage capacity. We also compare these novel technologies with the mainstream data storage means according to the technology roadmap on areal density.