LONDON, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Australian researchers reported Thursday that they have developed so-called "five dimensional" discs with a storage capacity 2,000 times that of current DVDs.

    James Chon of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia and colleagues described in the British journal Nature that how they were able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase a disc's data capacity while keeping its physical size intact.

    Discs currently have three spatial dimensions, but the new five-dimensional optical recording technique used wavelength of light and its polarization as the two additional dimensions.

    The researchers, who have already signed an agreement with Samsung, described the so-called spectral or colour dimension as well as polarization dimension as the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs.

    "The result is a theoretical 1.6 terabytes capacity for a DVD-sized disk," said the Nature editor's summary accompanying Chon's paper. A Blu-ray disc, by comparison, can store around 50 gigabytes.

    To create the colour dimension, the researchers inserted gold nanorods onto a disc's surface. Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, it was possible to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location.

    The researchers called this a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in a single colour wavelength using a laser.

    The fifth dimension was introduced using polarization. When light waves were projected onto the disc, the direction of the electric field contained within them aligned with the gold nanorods. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.

    "The polarization can be rotated 360 degrees," Chon said. "So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarization. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarization, without them interfering with each other."

    While some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, are yet to be resolved, the researchers are confident the discs will be commercially available within five to ten years.