Nanotubes that leak a vapour of lubricant could provide a tenfold increase in hard drive capacity. The claim is made by hard drive manufacturer Seagate, which is patenting the idea after research funded by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.
More magnetically stored information can be squeezed onto a hard disc by heating it. This changes the magnetic properties of the regions used to hold data so that they can be packed more closely together.
Unfortunately this heating evaporates the lubricant that lets a recording head travel over a disk smoothly. If the recording head crashes into the surface the whole disk then becomes useless.
Seagate's answer is to use a material made from millions of carbon nanotubes, embedded in the disc drive housing, to store the lubricant. As the disc spins, the lubricant will leak out and cover the surface of the disc.
Because the drive is sealed and the vapour cannot escape, the nanotubes could hold enough lubricant for a disc's lifetime. Seagate says the heat-assisted recording method should provide an information storage density of several terabits per square inch – 10 times more than is possible today。