HGST reaches 10-nanometer patterned-bit milestone

USA: HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a Western Digital company, is leading the disk drive industry to the forefront in nanolithography, long the exclusive purview of semiconductor manufacturers, by creating and replicating minute features that will allow the doubling of hard disk drive (HDD) density in future disk drives.

HGST Labs has combined two innovative nanotechnologies -- self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting -- to create large areas of dense patterns of magnetic islands only 10 billionths of a meter (10 nanometers) wide. These features are only about 50 atoms wide and some 100,000 times thinner than a human hair.

“As creators of the original hard disk drive, we are proud to continue our heritage of innovation with today’s nanotechnology advance,” said Currie Munce, VP, HGST Research. “The emerging techniques of self-assembling molecules and nanoimprinting utilised at the HGST Labs will have an enormous impact on nanoscale manufacturing, enabling bit-patterned media to become a cost-effective means of increasing data densities in magnetic hard disk drives before the end of the decade.”

HGST’s discoveries in nanolithography overcome the increasing challenges associated with photolithography. Long the preferred technology among the semiconductor industry for achieving successively smaller circuit features using traditional ever-shorter wavelengths of light, improved optics, masks, photosensitive materials and clever techniques, photolithography advancements have slowed as ultraviolet light sources have become too complex and expensive.

HGST is becoming a leading player in nanolithography. Today’s announcement represents a creative answer to the problems with photolithography and has grown out of the storage industry’s unique technical and strict cost targets.

HGST nanolithography achievements come at a critical juncture for storage drives as cloud computing, social networking and mobility create an ever increasing amount of content that must be stored, managed and accessed efficiently.