Research team saves information on a single molecule

Over the past few years, the building blocks of storage media have become ever smaller. But further miniaturization of the current technology is hindered by fundamental limits of quantum mechanics. A new approach consists of using so-called spin-crossover molecules as the smallest possible storage unit. Similar to normal hard drives, these special molecules can save information via their magnetic state. To do so, they have to be placed on surfaces without damaging their ability to save the information.