Scientists from the University of Glasgow have made a discovery that could allow the storage capacity of an iPod to increase by 150.000 times. A molecule-sized switch has been developed by nanotechnology researchers, which means that data storage can be increased without increasing component size.

Professor Lee Cronin says that this would allow them to squeeze about 500.00 gigabytes onto only one square inch, while the current limit for this space is 3.3 gigabytes. What is more, this research might lead to an increased number of transistors per chip, from 200 million to well over one billion.

Professor Cronin says that their breakthrough consists in the fact that they were able to design a functional nanocluster that incorporates two electron donating groups, which proves to be a very good way of producing a new molecule-based switch that can be easily manipulated by using an electric field.

However, this research is still in conceptual state, and scientists say that they have to solve fabrication issues as well as many other problems.