Cuneiform is the world's oldest form of writing, which was inscribed on clay tablets. Scientists have now developed a data storage system that's like cuneiform on steroids, capable of storing more data than a regular hard drive. The experimental new technology was created by Abigail Mann and colleagues at Flinders University in Australia.

While cuneiform was based on indentations scratched into clay tablets with a reed stylus, the newly designed system stores data through nanoscale indentations scratched into high-tech polymers with a fine-tipped probe mounted on an atomic force microscope.

The system replaces clay slabs with an inexpensive polymer film composed of sulfur and a compound called dicyclopentadiene. The data is stored on the film in the form of a series of nanoscale indentations. These tiny indentations are made (and read) using a fine-tipped probe mounted on an atomic force microscope... rather than a reed stylus.

In previous attempts at this "indentation-based" data storage system, the indentation was binary code. Indentation represents 1, and no indentation represents 0.

The polymer substrates used in these early systems were not only difficult to produce, but they were also not very stable or finely machined. This is where Flinders Polymers excels.

It's sensitive enough to precisely adjust the depth of each indent. Therefore, the data is no longer stored by a two-state binary code, but by a three-state ternary code, where no indentation is 0, an indentation of 0.3 to 1.0 nm depth is 1, and an indentation of 1.5 to 2.5 nm depth is 2.

This feature increases the data density of the system by four times compared to binary encoding.

What's more, these indentations remain intact and can be read until the polymer is heated to 140ºC (284ºF) for 10 seconds, thereby erasing it. The membrane can then be rewritten with new data. In tests conducted so far, the material has functioned normally after four write-read-erase-rewrite cycles.

Additionally, the abbreviation process can be performed at room temperature, making the energy requirements of the system relatively low.

"This research reveals the potential for using simple, renewable polysulfides in probe-based mechanical data storage, providing a potentially low-energy, high-density and more sustainable alternative to current technologies," said Mann, a PhD student in the Flinders School of Science and Engineering.

A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Advanced Science.