- 3 June 2005 -

Bayer backs InPhase Technologies

Bayer MaterialScience AG and Nanotech Partners have joined as new investors
in InPhase Technologies $32.1m third round of funding. Bayer had already agreed to a JD for the development and supply of polymer raw materials for the production of holographic data storage by InPhase Technologies (Bell Labs research spinout.)

The companies say that by 2006 they will introduce both a recording and reading device and a holographic data-storage medium, based on polymers made by Bayer MaterialScience, with a capacity of 300GB (or 50x storage of current DVD). Bayer MaterialScience is one of the world's largest producers of polymers, including materials used in CDs and DVDs.

Conventional optical storage devices, such as DVDs or CDs, record one bit of data at a time. But holographic drives can read or write a million bits at once, encoded as the interference pattern of two intersecting laser beams.

InPhase promises 2GBof data on postage stamp sized chip, or 20GB on a credit card. InPhase and Bayer MaterialScience say they are coöperating to research new types of specialty polymers that will make possible discs with a capacity of up to 1.6TB, somewhere areound 4m books or about 1.6m high-resolution photographs by 2009.