Patent Application
20150357039
The present invention relates to a three dimensional opto-magnetic data storage system and method which enables the data to be stored optomagnetically.
As of the computers being used, there is a requirement to identify the functions, which are desired to be done, to the computer. In the beginning, the functions expected from the computers were informed to the computers via punched cards. The said punched cards are one of the primitive examples of data storage systems. The limited capacity of the punched cards made necessary to develop different data storage ways. The magnetic tapes having more data capacity than the punched cards have been developed for this need. Data, which can be stored in ten thousand punched cards, can be stored in some magnetic tapes. After magnetic tapes, the diskettes having a magnetic disc therein have been developed. The said diskettes provide carrying the data as well as storing them. However, the said diskettes are not convenient to store data locally because of their limited capacity. Devices which are called hard drives and include storage area and reading/writing head therein have been developed for local storage in computers. With the increasing capacity need, the number of the storage areas within the hard drives and the data amount that can be stored in unit area of the storage unit have been increased. The said increases enable the capacity to be increased. The number of the read/write heads has also been increased in order to increase the access speed to the data stored in the said hard drives. With the increase in need to carry the data, the capacity of the portable media has also increased. CD; DVD, Blue-Ray etc. can be given as example for the said media.
Even though the capacities of the data storage media have increased, there is still need for storage area so large that it cannot be met by the said media. Especially the datacenters need storage area in very high capacities. Furthermore, access speed and recording speed of the said data is also important as well as the content on the stored data in order that the services to be served using the stored data will be fast.
Magnetic data storage operates based on changing the orientations of the magnetic dipoles. The magnetic domains wherein the orientations of all magnetic dipoles are same represent one bit. In optical storing methods, craters and non-crater areas present on the surface of the optical medium represent bits.
In the state of the art, there are optomagnetic (or magneto-optic) data storage units the orientation of the magnetic dipoles of which can be changed optically. Recording in the said storage area is realized on a ferromagnetic material coated on a disc. This ferromagnetic material is generally located inside the sheath which preserves it from dust. The biggest problems of magnetic storage units are the storage areas. One of the reasons for this size problem is that in case the recording density on a recording medium (data amount on a unit area) exceeds a determined value, the interaction between the bits increases and the thermal stability decreases. The said problem is generally called as superparamagnetic effect. One way to overcome this superparamagnetic effect is to use recording media having a high magnetic anisotropic energy density. However, this requires using high magnetic fields to change the magnetization of the recording medium that will not be practical.
Japanese Patent document no JP62184644, an application known in the state of the art, discloses a medium for optomagnetic memory. The said medium can easily be rewritten and it is stable against the outer magnetic fields. In the said document, it is disclosed that a laser light is focused to a film by a lens, and the film is heated by means of the focused laser light. Therefore, antiferromagnetic layer demagnetizes. In the meantime, by means of an external magnetic field applied on the film, the said desired information can be written on this area, the information which is written can remain here when the related area is cooled.
United States Patent document no US20110058458, an application known in the state of the art, discloses magneto-optical switching device for switching magnetization in a medium, comprising a magnetizable medium.
In the article titled “All-Optical Magnetic Recording with Circularly Polarized Light” (C. D. Stancin et. Al., PRL 99, 047601 (2007)), in the state of the art, a study is disclosed wherein the magnetization can be reversed using 40 femtoseconds laser pulses, without applying any magnetic field.
In the article titled “Spin-polarized light-emitting diodes and lasers” (Holub and Bhattacharya. J. Phys D: Appl Phys. 40(2007) R179-R203), in the state of the art, it is disclosed the spin polarized light sources and that the combinations of spin polarized carriers that will emit provide circularly polarized light.
In the article titled “Electrical Spin Injection and threshold Reduction in a Semiconductor Laser” (Holub M. et. al. Phys. Rev. Let. 98, 146603 (2007)), in the state of the art, spin polarized vertical cavity surface emitting laser with electron spin injection from Schottky tunnel barrier are shown.
In the article titled “Current Driven Domain Wall Velocities Exceeding the Spin Angular Momentum Transfer Rate in Permalloy Nanowires” (Hayashi M. et. al. Phys. Rev. Let., 98, 037204 (2007)), in the state of the art, it is disclosed that different driving mechanisms for current densities which exceeds the threshold value for transferring spin angular momentums of spin polarized electrons to the domain wall.
The objective of the present invention is to provide a three dimensional opto-magnetic data storage system and method which has high storage capacity.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a three dimensional opto-magnetic data storage system and method which has low power consumption.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a three dimensional opto-magnetic data storage system and method which has high data access speed.
Yet another objective of the present invention is to provide a three dimensional opto-magnetic data storage system and method wherein the read/write errors are decreased.
Another objective of the present invention is to provide a three dimensional opto-magnetic data storage system and method wherein the data transfer can be performed up and down.
The data storage system and method developed to fulfill the objectives of the present invention is illustrated in the accompanying figures, in which:
The components shown in the figures are each given reference numerals as follows:
The inventive three dimensional data storage system (1) essentially comprises
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the data storage system (1) comprises
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, there are more than one intermediate layers in order to increase the capacity of the data storage system (1). The number of the said intermediate layers and thus the storage area can be increased as much as desired. In the said embodiment, the first intermediate layer (7) is present under the top layer (6). The next intermediate layers (7) are placed on top of each other such that they will be under the first intermediate layer (7). The bottom layer (8) is present below the intermediate layer (7) which is under the said intermediate layers (7).
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the bits (41, 42, 43) located on the magnetic layer (4) which a layer has are aligned such that one lower buffer bit (43) will be next to two storage bits (41) and one upper buffer bit (42) will be next to the lower buffer bit (43). The group comprised of one lower buffer bit (43) located next to two storage bits (41) and one upper buffer bit (42) located next to the said lower buffer bit (43) are added one after another so that the storage area is increased.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, one of the optical units (2) is positioned such that it will be above the upper buffer bit (42) present within the magnetic layer (4) which the one level below intermediate layer (7) or the bottom layer (8) has, and the other one is positioned such that it will be under the lower buffer bit (43) present within the magnetic layer which the one level above intermediate layer (7) or the top layer (6) has. The optical unit (2) positioned such that it will be above the upper buffer bit (42) present within the magnetic layer (4) which the one level below intermediate layer (7) or the bottom layer (8) has is called as the top emitting optical unit (2), and the optical unit (2) positioned such that it will be under the lower buffer bit (43) present within the magnetic layer which the one level above intermediate layer (7) or the top layer (6) has is called as bottom emitting optical unit (2). In this embodiment, some of the thermal insulators (3) located between two optical units (2) in the same layer are positioned such that they will be between the upper buffer bit (42) which the said layer has and the lower buffer bit (43) which the one lower layer has. The other part of the said thermal insulators (3) are positioned such that they will be between the storage bit (41) which the layer on which the said optical bits (2) are present and the storage bit (41) which one lower layer has and which is right under the said storage bit (41).
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the reflecting layer (24) which the optical unit (2) has is formed by arranging the layers having the thickness as whole multiples of the quarter of the wavelength of the light generated by the active layer (23) on top of each other. The said reflector is also called as distributed Bragg reflector. In this embodiment, there is one reflecting layer (24) each under and on the active layer (23).
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the upper electric contact (21), which the optical unit (2) located on the upper buffer bit (42) has, is positioned such that it will be between the magnetic layer (4) on which the said upper buffer bit (42) is located and the thermal insulator (3); and the lower electric contact (22) is positioned right under the magnetic layer (4) in the layer on which the said optical unit (2) is located. In this embodiment the lower electric contact (22), which the optical unit (2) located below the lower buffer bit (42) has, is positioned such that it will be between the magnetic layer (4) located on one lower layer and the transparent layer (5), and the upper electric contact (21) is positioned right above the magnetic layer (4) located on the layer on which the said optical unit (2) is present. This placement makes it easy to produce the said data storage. system (1).
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the optical unit (2) emits circularly polarized electromagnetic wave. In case the current given to the optical unit (2) for generating a wave is spin polarized,. the electric field component generated by the optical unit (2) rotates. according to the direction of the said spin polarization. The upper buffer bit (42) or the lower buffer bit (43) between the upper electric contact (22) and the lower electric contact (21) of the optical unit (2) enable the current given to the optical unit (2) to be spin polarized. Rotational direction of the electric field of the wave varies depending on the status of the upper buffer bit (42) or lower buffer bit (43). For example, in case the upper buffer bit (42) or lower buffer bit (43) is 0, if the electric field component of the wave. rotates clockwise; it rotates counter clockwise in case the upper buffer bit (42) or lower buffer bit (43) is 1, or in case the upper buffer bit (42) or lower buffer bit (43) is 0, if the electric field component of the wave rotates counter clockwise, it rotates clockwise in case the upper buffer bit (42) or lower buffer bit (43) is 1. The wave the rotational direction of the Electric field component of which is determined according to the status of the upper buffer bit (42) or the lower buffer bit (43) is sent to the storage bit (41) in the target layer. Thus, the status of the storage bit (41) is determined according to the rotational direction of the electrical field component of this wave.
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the case wherein the orientations of the magnetic dipoles forming the bits (41, 42, 43) are upwards is the case wherein the bits (41, 42, 43) are 0; and the case wherein the orientations of the magnetic dipoles forming the bits (41, 42, 43) are downwards is the case wherein the bits (41, 42, 43) are 1.
In another embodiment of the invention, the case wherein the orientations of the magnetic dipoles forming the bits (41, 42, 43) are upwards is the case wherein the bits (41, 42, 43) are 1; and the case wherein the orientations of the magnetic dipoles forming the bits (41, 42, 43) are downwards is the case wherein the bits (41, 42, 43) are 0.
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, which magnetic dipole orientations correspond to which bit state is defined by the user.
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, when the significant bit is wanted to be transferred upwards, the optical units (2) located on the upper buffer bits (42) are used; and when the significant bit is wanted to be transferred upwards, the optical units (2) under the lower buffer bits (43) are used.
In case an electrical current is applied in accordance with the arrangement of the bits (41, 42, 43) on a magnetic layer (4), the said bits (41, 42,43) shift in reverse direction to the applied electrical current. In other words, each storage bit (41) shifts to the position where the upper buffer bit (42) or lower buffer bit (43) next to itself is present, reversely to this current.
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, there are at least three empty bits present next to the bits at the far end of the magnetic layer (4).
In the inventive data storage method (100), the down transfer process comprises the steps of
In the inventive data storage method (100), the up transfer process comprises the steps of
In the preferred embodiment of the invention, the storage bit (41) wanted to be read can be a storage bit (41) on the bottom layer (8) or the top layer (6) on which the data is recorded by an external writing head.
In the inventive data storage method (100), in down transfer process, the storage bits (41) present next to the lower buffer bits (43) in the magnetic layer (4) on which the storage bit (41) wanted to be read are shifted to the position of the lower buffer bits (43) by applying a current pulse to the said layer (101). Then, whether the one lower layer is the target layer is determined (102). The lower buffer bits (43) present next to the storage bits (41) in the magnetic layer (4) located on one lower layer are shifted to the position of the storage bits. (41) next to them by applying a current pulse to the said layer if the one lower layer is not the target layer (103). The said method is called as spin-torque induced domain wall motion in the state of the art. Then, a current pulse is applied between the upper electrical contacts (22) and lower electrical contacts (21) of the optical units (2) located below all lower buffer bits (43) on the magnetic layers (4) on which the said lower buffer bit (43) is present (104). Therefore all lower buffer bits (43) on the magnetic layer (4) on which the significant bit is present are copied to the storage bits (41) located on a lower layer corresponding right below the optical units (2) (105). After the data in the significant storage bit (41) is carried, the bits the positions of which are shifted in step 101 are returned to their initial positions by applying a current pulse in reverse direction to the current pulse applied in step 101 to the magnetic layer (4) (106). The procedures disclosed as from step 101 are continued until the data of the significant storage bit (41) is carried to the target layer. A current pulse is applied between the upper electrical contacts (22) and lower electrical contacts (21) of the optical units (2) located below all lower buffer bits (43) on the magnetic layers (4) on which the significant bit is present if the lower layer is the target layer (107). Therefore, the state of the said bits (43) is transferred to the storage bits (41) of one lower layer (108). Then, the bits the positions of which are shifted in step 101 are returned to their initial position by applying a current pulse in reverse direction to the current pulse applied in step. 101 to the magnetic layer (4) (109). Then the processes are stopped (110).
In the inventive data storage method (100), in up transfer process, the storage bits (41) present next to the upper buffer bits (42) in the magnetic layer (4) on which the storage bit (41) wanted to be read is present are shifted to the position of the upper buffer bits (42) by applying a current pulse to the said layer (201). Then, whether the one upper layer is the target layer is determined (202). The upper buffer bits (42) present next to the storage bits (41) in the magnetic layer (4) located on one upper layer are shifted to the position of the storage bits (41) next to them by applying a current pulse to the said layer if the one upper layer is not the target layer (203). The said method is called as spin-torque induced domain wall motion in the state of the art. Then, a current pulse is applied between the upper electrical contacts (22) and lower electrical contacts (21) of the optical units (2) located above all upper buffer bits (42) on the magnetic layers (4) on which the said upper buffer bit (42) is present (204). Therefore all upper buffer bits (42) on the magnetic layer (4) on which the significant bit is present are copied to the storage bits (41) located on one upper layer corresponding right above the optical units (2) (205). After the data in the significant storage bit (41) is carried, the bits the positions of which are shifted in step 101 are returned to their initial positions by applying a current pulse in reverse direction to the current pulse applied in step 101 to the magnetic layer (4) (206). The procedures disclosed as from step 101 are continued until the data of the significant storage bit (41) is carried to the target layer. A current pulse is applied between the upper electrical contacts (22) and lower electrical contacts (21) of the optical units (2) located above all upper buffer bits (42) on the magnetic layers (4) on which the significant bit is present if the upper layer is the target layer (207). Therefore, the state of the said bits (43) is transferred to the storage bits (41) of one upper layer (208). Then, the bits the positions of which are shifted in step 201 are returned to their initial position by applying a current pulse in reverse direction to the current pulse applied in step 201 to the magnetic layer (4) (109). Then the processes are stopped (110).
Reading data can be realized by using methods such as GMR and TMR present in the state of art, but it is not limited to these.
By means of all lower buffer bits (43) or upper buffer bits (42) on a magnetic layer (4) being transferred on lower buffer bits (43) on one lower layer or upper buffer bits (42) on one upper layer at the same time in reading and recording procedures, data access speeds can be reduced to nanoseconds even to picoseconds.
In reading and recording procedures, power consumption of the said data storage system (1) is very little since it is not required to heat the significant bits or applying an external magnetic field to the said bits.
It is possible to develop various embodiments of the inventive opto-magnetic data storage system (1) and method (100). The invention cannot be limited to the examples described herein and it is essentially as defined in the claims.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012/15356 | Dec 2012 | TR | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/IB2013/061337 | 12/26/2013 | WO | 00 |
