Self-assembling Polymer Arrays Improve HDD Storage Creation

A new manufacturing approach holds the potential to overcome the technological limitations currently facing the microelectronics and data-storage industries, paving the way to smaller electronic devices and higher-capacity hard drives.

"In the past 20 to 30 years, researchers have been able to shrink the size of devices and the size of the patterns that you need to make those devices, following the use of the same types of lithographic materials, tools and strategies, only getting better and better at it," says Paul Nealey, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center (NSEC).

Now, those materials and tools are reaching their fundamental technical limits, hampering further performance gains. In addition, Nealey says, extrapolating lithography — a process used to pattern manufacturing templates — to smaller and smaller dimensions may become prohibitively expensive. Further advances will require a new approach that is both commercially viable and capable of meeting the demanding quality-control standards of the industry.