Larger Hard Drives Possible Thanks to Self-assembling Polymer Arrays

Most folks up in Madison are readying their face paint and stocking up on tailgating supplies, but the geeks among us (bless 'em!) are focusing their attention on something much more relevant to your future RAID array. A team from UW-Madison (along with partners from Hitachi) is getting set to publish a report that details a patterning technology that could offer performance gains over current methods while reducing time and cost of manufacturing. The process builds on existing approaches by "combining the lithography techniques traditionally used to pattern microelectronics with novel self-assembling materials called block copolymers." So, what does all this technobabble mean for you? Huge gains in density on patterned media, or if that's still not straightforward enough, ginormous HDDs in the near future. (source: Engadget)