AVS 65th International Symposium & Exhibition
    Extending Additive Manufacturing to the Atomic Scale Focus Topic Wednesday Sessions
       Session AM+MP+NS-WeA

Invited Paper AM+MP+NS-WeA9
Kilobyte Scale Data Storage through Autonomous Atom Assembly

Wednesday, October 24, 2018, 5:00 pm, Room 102B

Session: Atomic Scale Manipulation with SPM
Presenter: David Coffey, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Authors: A.F. Otte, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
D. Coffey, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
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The ability to manipulate individual atoms by means of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) opens op opportunities for storage of digital data on the atomic scale. Recent achievements in this direction include data storage based on bits encoded in the charge state, the magnetic state, or the local presence of single atoms or atomic assemblies. However, a key challenge at this stage is the extension of such technologies into large-scale rewritable bit arrays. We demonstrate a digital atomic scale memory of up to 1 kilobyte (8,000 bits) using an array of individual surface vacancies in a chlorine terminated Cu(100) surface. The chlorine vacancies are found to be stable at temperatures up to 77 K. The memory, crafted using scanning tunneling microscopy at low temperature, can be read and re-written automatically by means of atomic scale markers, and offers an areal density of 502 Terabits per square inch, outperforming state-of-the-art hard disk drives by three orders of magnitude.