It seems that someone comes up with another “amazing”
breakthrough in nanotechnology every day, and most of it will
never see light of day … but occasionally something does grab my
attention. It seems researchers in Germany have made the
beginnings of a high density storage device from carbon
nanotubes. There is no doubt that carbon nanotubes are an
interesting concept, but I haven't heard too many promising uses
for them yet–until now. By packing the tiny carbon tubes with
magnetic material consisting of iron, cobalt, or nickel, the 10
nanometer tubes, which are grown on structured silicon wafers,
could be used as nonvolatile memory. If this theory can be
brought to fruition memory density could be increased a thousand
times. Though we are a long way off from seeing these on store
shelves–if it even makes it out of the lab–I think researchers
are on to something. Even if it is not feasible to create a
memory replacement we are sure to see other research spawned
from this project, possibly technology to repla