Technology​

Names of all 911 victims

2,750 names of victims lost on 9/11.

Wikipedia printed on a nickel book with each leaflet holding 8,000 pages.

Equivalent of 150 books stacked 2 stories high.

Nickel Library currently preserved with the Intuitive Machines Odysseus Lander.

The very first motion picture frames preserved in gold.

NanoFiche technology writes at a resolution of 300,000 dots per inch (dpi) as a binary of metal vs missing metal. The system engraves at a speed of 1,000 pages a minute. The process excels at creating analog hard copies into metal for a permanent record. Although the engraving is black and white, a color separation is achieved by separating the image into Red, Green, and Blue channels with full color recovery. Currently the predominant storage is of documents and photos, digital information is also stored when converted to a Base 65 text or high density QR like code.

This is a permanent, high density, and fast replacement for aging technologies like microfilm which will last typically a generation with a chemical break down known as “vinegar syndrome”. NanoFiche, made of nickel and gold, is inert to last for the life of the metal. Left alone it has an expected age of millions of years.

The entire Wikipedia Encyclopedia can be printed on nickel in less than a month and fits in a banker’s box. Unlike high density microfilm, eye readable images are recorded on a nickel disc, readable with a microscope and indexed through a mapped matrix.

Because of the high density recording, a bank box that typically can hold 2,000 letter sized pages, can hold an astonishing 350,000,000 equivalent pages. A 1/4 inch stack of 12mm NanoFiche can hold an equivalency of books stacking over 2 stories high. The same stack at 28mm holds up to 600 books.

For very long term cold storage, the best systems are analog. This has several advantages. One it is very easy to decode. Even if the information is in a different language, a decoder key such as the Rosetta key made by the Long Now Foundation can be used to retrieve information.

Current information storage system, either analog or digital, require migration when new technology becomes available. Microfiche is a film that stores analog information by an optical reduction process. The film is volatile and susceptible to humidity and heat. The same can be said for digital media. Energy consuming HVAC systems are needed to maintain all existing storage systems. NanoFiche changes that paradigm and can easily be stored in a warehouse and survive a fire with no need for any energy consumption for maintenance. As a resilient analog format it does not require new technologies to migrate to.

Readability is simple and future-proof. It needs only a basic optical microscope (e.g., 400x magnification), lens, and light source, no electricity, software, or compatible hardware needed. For convenience, digital scanners or apps can also interpret the patterns.

This process yields extraordinary durability: resistant to fire (nickel melts at ~2,651°F / 1,455°C), radiation, extreme temperatures, humidity, and chemical degradation—proven in tests (e.g., Los Alamos high-heat exposure with no observable damage at 20,000x SEM magnification). It’s why NanoFiche has flown on lunar missions (e.g., with Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines) and is used for everything from personal heirloom jewelry to preserving humanity’s knowledge for millennia.

Process

We have two processes with different resolutions and size characteristics.
1. NanoFiche high density process
2. NanoFiche low density process or Totenpass

Both of these processes of creating nano inscribed nickel wafers or plate begin with getting the archival data in the form of a PDF format or most common photo formats. They are first submitted through a portal and then organized and indexed sequentially. After file conversion and other preparation, the documents are recorded onto a glass wafer.

The Nanofiche process is created by modulating a laser beam in a spiral or concentric manner using a polar raster direct laser etch. This has a resolution of 300,000 dpi and records up to 28mm discs.

The Totenpass process records at 25,400 dpi and records up to a 300mm plate. This system also utilizes a laser beam but relies on a high resolution digital light panel to create the one micron pixels.

After the plates are recorded, they are processed to remove areas exposed by the lasers. They plates are then seeded to create a conductive layer for electroforming where nickel and gold molecules are deposited under very high current until a thick nickel plate forms.

A matrix process in electroforming creates “father” nickel master from the inscribed glass wafer. An intermediate “mother” and final ”son” then is generated from this nickel “father” master wafer. For mass production, polymer and resin copies can also be provided in lieu of nickel “sons.” We also have the ability to combine digital data (CD or DVD) and analog human readable formats on the same disc.

Why adopt our technology for permanent archival preservation?
– Nickel has a much longer life span than microfilm, up to thousands of years.
– Nickel is resistant to high temperatures, water damage, and electromagnetic disruption, eliminating the need for expensive control of temperature and humidity.
– No need for future migration of digital data, as long as a microscope (lenses) and light (sun) are available.
– High speed recording of analog data, preserving more documents in a much shorter time.
– High density, reducing precious storage space.
– No high energy cost to store mass amounts of information.

What file formats can I submit?
For analog information, customer documents or files should ideally be provided in PDF or TIFF format at the highest resolution possible. The analog files will then be converted and combined into larger files that can then be stitched together by an automated scanning process.

For digital information, customer documents or files to be stored should be provided in a DDP (Disc Description Protocol) format either as a CD or DVD format. For a hybrid digital/analog format, since the information compete for the same space on the wafer, there is a trade off on how much of each data can be stored.

What do you need from me?
The customer provides the archival material and is responsible for organizing the data, including arranging such data according to their own preferred indexing scheme. We would assist and recommend a filing system. For recovery there are several systems we can recommend and assist in the set up. Keyence and several other companies have systems that automate the scanning process and stitch the information together as well as parse the pages back into a PDF format.

Page Capacity
A small number of pages printable in a large format or a large number of pages printable in nano scale can be etched utilizing the NanoFiche process. A letter sized page and hold up to 150,000 pages of text or photos. Since there are always trade offs in reduction to practice, larger fonts and larger texts will reduce the number of pages but will be easier to access and recover with lower resolution optical devices. In some cases, if the pages are large enough, an entire book can be recovered with a single high resolution digital camera image capturing all the pages. The pages can be parsed out by software codes, page by page, to get the entire book back within seconds.

Layout
Since the NanoRosetta process utilizes a round glass wafer to direct laser etch, the layout follows the contour of polar coordinates. To maximize the capacity of a disc, the pages are laid out from any direction left to right, top to down to fill the contour of a disc. Alternatively the pages can be laid out in blocks to correspond to any logical configuration that would facilitate ease of retrieval. For example a block can hold 2,000 pages of a book or annual publication. A group of such blocks can preserve an entire collection.

The Totenpass process produces card formats. Currently the two standard sizes are 54mm 86mm and 64mm x 128mm.

Speed
Prints at 80,000 pages per hour.

Wafer or Plate Size
NanoFiche creates discs for data storage up to 28mm on a polar recording system. On a 160mm wafer, we record 8 discs at a time or 16,000 pages in one recording.

Totenpass creates rectangular format and records in a Cartesian rasterizing process.

Turn Around Time
Depending on the size of the project, but most recordings can be turned around within 5 business days.

F.A.Q.​

Frequently Asked Questions