science magazine journal

science magazine journal

THE HAPPY EVERAFTER

saved an important document on your hard drive  how long do you think it will persist  indefinitely maybe maybe not how many times have we all ended up losing valuable data because the hard drive crashed or pen drives were infected with malware but theres a pretty good chance that if we can store information in materials that can sustain forever say a diamond the information will remain intact  forever diamond is a form of carbon and the very chemistry that causes it to sparkle enables it to do other fascinating stuff diamond originates from coal that has borne tremendous pressure over several decades under this immense pressure the atoms in coal alter their arrangement to yield a denser and infinitely harder substance  diamond  the previously black opaque coal can now split light and reflect it back as a rainbow of colours while coal is undergoing metamorphosis sometimes gaseous atoms get trapped within replacing a carbon atom in the process this gives rise to certain molecular defects one of which is a nitrogen vacancy center or nv for short a nitrogen vacancy arises when a nitrogen impurity a nitrogen atom taking the place of a carbon atom is adjacent to a vacant lattice site ie a missing carbon atom extra electrons from nearby impurities eg nitrogen spill over into the nvgiving it a negative charge. these electron-rich centres can then emit electrons under certain experimental conditions obfuscating results it is in fact this problem that a team of scientists spearheaded by dr meriles from the city university of new york decided to explore what they found in turn is rather interesting dr meriles and his team discovered that with the right tools they could control the charge of nv centres by shining a green laser the nv could be made to trap electrons while shining a red laser tends to cause emission of previously trapped electrons this led to the idea of using the charged state of nvs as a basis for coding digital information in diamonds one can think of each nv centre as a nanoscopic bit explains dr siddharth dhomkar the lead researcher of the project if the defect has an extra electron the bit is a one if it doesnt have an extra electron the bit is a zero these are largely the rules that could be used for storing information in diamonds.to demonstrate the viability of what they proposed the scientists coded black and white pictures of two great physicists albert einstein and erwin schrodinger in a diamond through a laser coding technique. this information they say can last forever provided the diamond is kept in the dark and not exposed to light every time we shine a laser beam there is a possibility that the nv would either capture or release an electron. this is the reason why the information gets degraded if read out multiple time  says dr dhomkar

science magazine journal