[Tech] Il te' verde fa bene - anche agli hard disk

Un gruppo di ricercatori di Tucson, in Arizona, ha annunciato di avere messo a punto un innovativo prodotto a base di estratti di te' verde in grado di pulire le testine degli hard disk da tre a quattro volte più velocemente che con i composti chimici attualmente usati.



Se il nuovo composto a base di sostanze naturali e biodegradabili potrà essere prodotto in quantità industriali a un prezzo competitivo, questo comporterà un vantaggio per l'ambiente e al tempo stesso un grosso risparmio per i produttori di dischi rigidi.

"It's an exciting new area of chemistry," said John Lombardi, lead researcher on the project and president of Ventana Research. "Our original drive was to develop a (polishing) fluid that was biodegradable. But as we got deeper into developing the compound, one thing we discovered is that it could increase the efficiency of the magnetic read-write manufacturing process."



The hard-drive manufacturing industry relies on special polishing compounds, or slurries, to ensure that the magnetic heads responsible for reading and writing data on a hard drive have virtually no imperfections on their surfaces. A bump or particle that is just 1 nanometer in height could cause the head to scratch the disc-like platter that it sits above, destroying the data on the hard drive.



Manufacturers add the slurries to the hard-drive heads while they are being polished. Although the specific ingredients in the slurries are closely guarded secrets, they typically work by attracting and containing the tiny ceramic particles that are created during the polishing process. After a certain amount of time, the slurry is washed away and disposed of according to various regulations on the chemicals that it contains.



With the compound created by the Arizona team, the particles would be attracted by tannins in the green tea extract. The ability of tannin to bind readily with ceramics is the same principle that causes green tea to leave stains on mugs and teapots. The researchers hope the high availability and biodegradability of green tea will make it a less-expensive option for drive manufacturers.



The researchers also said they believe their discovery could be applied to all sorts of electronics-polishing applications, known as chemical mechanical planarization. "Although John's (Lombardi) work is in the magnetic media industry, I think the compounds themselves have far-reaching implications for the semiconductor industry," said Srini Raghavan, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Arizona.

Fonte: Wired News.