Magnetic data storage mediums have progressed quite nicely in the past few years. Hard drive sizes have grown while prices have plummeted. While the improvements have been impressive, two inventions by Rensselaer Polytechnic student Paul Morrow show that there's still some room for improvement.

Morrow's first invention is a brand new magnetic nanomaterial. Current hard drive technology uses a two-dimensional magnetic film for data storage. Morrow's nanomaterial is actually three-dimensional, composed of freestanding nanoscale columns of non-magnetic copper and magnetic cobalt in alternating layers. The unique film has interesting magnetic properties that may benefit data storage at room temperatures.

Morrow explains, "Because the nanostructure is three-dimensional, it has the potential to vastly expand data storage capability. A disk with increased data storage density would reduce the size, cost, and power consumption of any electronic device that uses a magnetic hard drive, and a read head sensor based on a small number of these nanocolumns has promise for increasing spatial sensitivity, so that bits that are more closely spaced on the disk can be read."

The second invention was born of necessity. Lacking instrumentation to accurately measure the magnetic fields created by his new material, Morrow designed and built one. The device is simply a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), built with no magnetic parts. Typical STMs include magnetic parts that make scrutinizing magnetic fields unreliable at best.

In conjunction with an electromagnet to control the behavior of the nanoscale columns of his material, Morrow's specialized STM was able to measure the magnetic properties of fewer than ten nanocolumns at once. Presently he is working on tuning the device to be able to detect and measure single columns.

Morrow's STM may find use in several fields unrelated to data storage. Such a sensitive magnetic scanning device could be useful in medical fields for measuring magnetic fields generated by the body, by industries for motion sensors in machinery or even by homeland security in detecting the magnetic properties in the ink used to print currency and secure documents.