Secure Data Storage On Fingertips

Japanese researchers are using femtosecond laser pulses to write data into human fingernails.

Some snippets from an Optic.org report -

“Yoshio Hayasaki and his colleagues have discovered that data can be written into a human fingernail by irradiating it with femtosecond laser pulses. Capacities are said to be up to 5 mega bits and the stored data lasts for 6 months – the length of time it takes a fingernail to be completely replaced.”

“The team’s approach is simple: use a femtosecond laser system to write the data into the nail and a fluorescence microscope to read it out. The key to reading the data out is that the nail’s fluorescence increases at the point irradiated by the femtosecond pulses.”

“An optical microscope containing a filtered xenon arc lamp excites the fluorescence and reads out the data stored at the various depths.”

“Although the initial experiments have concentrated on small pieces of nail, the team is now developing a system that can write data to a fingernail which is still attached to a finger.”

Simple portable high memory data storage on nails – where next?