A data-storage device based on silver ions embedded in glass could theoretically store 180 gigabytes per square centimetre - about 80 times the capacity of a Blu-ray disc. Lionel Canioni at the University of Bordeaux in France and his team embedded a three-dimensional matrix of silver ions in light-sensitive glass. The ions fluoresce when hit with a laser. The researchers could control the silver s fluorescence at 16 discrete levels, coding information as varying levels of brightness rather than as the binary ones' and 'zeroes' that conventional magnetic storage devices use.
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