Iomega announces patents for DVD disc with nano-technology

May 25, 2005

AO-DVD (not to be confused with HD DVD's old name AOD) and NG-DVD are the acronyms of two new nano-tech based optical disc formats Iomega is working on and as a result of this work Iomega has been granted US patent 6,879,556 on the April 12.

AO-DVD stands for Articulated Optical Digital Versatile Disc and uses "reflective nano-structures to encode data in a highly multi-level format". According to Iomega the format has a potential of storing 40-100 times more information than the current DVD format with 5-30 times higher data transfer rates.

NG-DVD stands for Nano-Grating Digital Versatile Disc and uses "nano-gratings to encode multi-level information via reflectivity, polarization, phase, and reflective orientation multiplexing".

"Subwavelength optical data storage can provide an
array of mechanisms by which the state of a focused spot of light upon
reflection can be precisely changed. This is the key to new commercially
interesting multi-level optical data storage that this technology
represents," commented Fred Thomas, Chief Technologist, Research and
Development, Iomega Corporation. "The nano-replication technologies that
are used to fabricate these structures at low-cost are just emerging from
various labs. I believe the scope of Iomega patents issued and pending in
this area, in conjunction with these exciting new nano-replication
technologies, will make this a fertile area for optical data storage
development and innovation for years to come. As high definition content
becomes more pervasive, Iomega sees significant technology partnership and
licensing opportunities for this intellectual property."

Thomas will present an overview of subwavelength
optical data storage technology at the prestigious Information Storage
Industry Consortium (INSIC) symposium in July inMonterey, CA.

Thanks to Womble for submitting the news! The complete press release is available here and the patent description is available here.

Source: Iomega