The researchers' "salty developer solution" method was invented by Joel Yang, a scientist at (IMRE) at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research. Yang first developed the method when he was a graduate student at MIT. Yang and researchers from the National University of Singapore and the Data Institute, perfected the nanopatterning technique.

In the simplest of terms, nanopatterning more closely packs miniature structures that hold information in the form of bits. "What we have shown is that bits can be patterned more densely together by reducing the number of processing steps," Yang said in a statement. Scientists use the term "grain" to describe the packages of bits deposited on the surface of the platter.

Current technology uses tiny grains, about 7 nanometers or 8 nanometers in size, deposited on the surface of storage media, Yang said. However, a single bit of data is stored in a cluster of these "grains" and not in any single "grain." The researchers' bits are about 10nm in size but store information in a single structure. The researchers are now working to increase the storage density even further.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .

in Computerworld's Storage Topic Center.