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An animated view of the Millipede
The Millipede Concept
 The Millipede concept: for operation of the device, the storage medium - a thin film of organic material (yellow) deposited on a silicon "table" - is brought into contact with the array of silicon tips (green) and moved in x- and y-direction for reading and writing. Multiplex drivers (red) allow addressing of each tip individually. [ TIF ] [ More picture options ] [ Get permission to re-use ]
Millipede cantilevers
Stored bits
 Stored bits: storage areas assigned to individual tips may be discerned in the image on top left, which shows that more than 80 percent of the 1,024 cantilevers of an experimental setup were able to write data (zoom to 12 storage areas at right). The close-ups (center) present 40 nm (nanometers) wide indentations at a "pitch" (distance between centers of neighboring indentations) of 120 nm (left) and 40 nm (right), the latter leading to areal density of ca. 400 gigabits per square inch. The same magnification factor has been applied to the image at the bottom, which demonstrates the potential for Terabit-per-square-inch density with 10-nm-diameter marks at a 20-nm pitch. [ TIF ] [ More picture options ] [ Get permission to re-use ]
The Millipede Chip
Millipede cantilevers and tips
 Millipede cantilevers and tips: electron microscope views of the 3 mm by 3 mm cantilever array (top), of an array section of 64 cantilevers (upper center), an individual cantilever (lower center), and an individual tip (bottom) positioned at the free end of the cantilever which is 70 micrometers (thousands of a millimeter) long, 10 micrometers wide, and 0.5 micrometers thick. The tip is less than 2 micrometers high and the radius at its apex smaller than 20 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter). [ TIF ] [ More picture options ] [ Get permission to re-use ]  Millipede cantilevers and tips: electron microscope views of the 3 mm by 3 mm cantilever array (top), of an array section of 64 cantilevers (upper center), an individual cantilever (lower center), and an individual tip (bottom) positioned at the free end of the cantilever which is 70 micrometers (thousands of a millimeter) long, 10 micrometers wide, and 0.5 micrometers thick. The tip is less than 2 micrometers high and the radius at its apex smaller than 20 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter). [ TIF ] [ More picture options ] [ Get permission to re-use ]  Millipede cantilevers and tips: electron microscope views of the 3 mm by 3 mm cantilever array (top), of an array section of 64 cantilevers (upper center), an individual cantilever (lower center), and an individual tip (bottom) positioned at the free end of the cantilever which is 70 micrometers (thousands of a millimeter) long, 10 micrometers wide, and 0.5 micrometers thick. The tip is less than 2 micrometers high and the radius at its apex smaller than 20 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter). [ TIF ] [ More picture options ] [ Get permission to re-use ]  Millipede cantilevers and tips: electron microscope views of the 3 mm by 3 mm cantilever array (top), of an array section of 64 cantilevers (upper center), an individual cantilever (lower center), and an individual tip (bottom) positioned at the free end of the cantilever which is 70 micrometers (thousands of a millimeter) long, 10 micrometers wide, and 0.5 micrometers thick. The tip is less than 2 micrometers high and the radius at its apex smaller than 20 nanometers (millionths of a millimeter). [ TIF ] [ More picture options ] [ Get permission to re-use ] The "Millipede" - Nanotechnology Entering Data Storage
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