In today’s world of digital information, an enormous amount of data is exchanged and stored on a daily basis.
In the 1980s, IBM unveiled the first hard drive—which was the size of a refrigerator—that could store 1 GB of data, but now we have memory devices that have a thousand-fold greater data-storage capacity and can easily fit in the palm of our hand. If the current pace of increase in digital information is any indication, we require yet newer data recording systems that are lighter, have low environmental impact, and, most importantly, have higher data storage density.
Recently, a new class of materials called axially polar-ferroelectric columnar liquid crystals (AP-FCLCs) has emerged as a candidate for future high-density memory storage materials. An AP-FCLC is a liquid crystal with a structure of parallel columns generated by molecular self-assembly, which have polarization along the column axis.
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