High-density ferroelectric recording using a hard disk drive-type data storage system

Ferroelectric probe data storage has been proposed as a novel data storage method in which bits are recorded based on the polarization directions of individual domains. These bits are subsequently read by scanning nonlinear dielectric microscopy. The domain walls of typical ferroelectric materials are quite thin: often only several times the lattice constant, which is advantageous for high-density data storage. In this work, high-density read/write (R/W) demonstrations were conducted using a hard disk drive-type test system, and the writing of bit arrays with a recording density of 3.4 Tbit/in.2 was achieved. Additionally, a series of writing and reading operations was successfully demonstrated at a density of 1 Tbit/in.2. Favorable characteristics of ferroelectric recording media for use with the proposed method are discussed in the latter part of this paper.