Moser Baer India Ltd has joined hands with the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) to work jointly in the frontier areas of thin film sputtering technology suitable for optical data storage devices. Towards this end, the two organizations signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a period of five years to jointly scour this hi-tech field.

Director of IIT Delhi, Padmashree Professor, RS Sirohi and head of engineering and technology at Moser Baer, Giriraj Nyati signed the MoU. Welcoming the agreement, Moser Baer CMD Deepak Puri said, "Moser Baer has always focused on applied R&D. While we invest two percent of our revenues on R&D, it is agreements like this one with organizations like IIT that really hold the potential to rewrite technology."

Nyati said that there is enormous scope for the development of new technologies to enhance the current data storage capacity of optical formats-from 50 GB to 200 GB -using both organic and inorganic materials as the recording media. "The current maximum recordable/rewritable capacity of optical media ranges from 4.7 to 8.5 GB, which will be enhanced to a maximum of 50 GB between 2007 and 2010. This enhancement will be attributed to the advent of Blu-ray technology," he added.

Nyati emphasized that the collaboration with IIT Delhi was an attempt to the leverage the synergistic capabilities on both sides. While Moser Baer has mass manufacturing skills of optical data storage media, IIT Delhi is a premier R&D institute in the country, with a vast pool of knowledge in the fundamentals of thin film sputtering technology.