The storage capacity of magnetic tape has increased dramatically in recent years. This means that tape must be designed to have high recording density in order to save more data in less space. To realize this, it is essential to coat the tape surface with a thin magnetic particle layer. Today, this magnetic tape layer has become thinner than 200 nanometers (one nanometer is one-millionth of a millimeter).

Aiming for even greater storage density, Sony has pursued technological development to create an even thinner layer of magnetic particles. Our advanced thin-layer coating technology is now capable of uniformly applying magnetic particles as thin as some tens of nanometers over the entire tape surface.

Let us explain this advanced technology by considering the process of painting an automobile:
For the paint to have the required thickness, you might need to apply one liter of paint per car. Now, imagine how much paint is needed to coat the entire car surface if Sony’s thin-layer coating technology is applied. The answer is: an amount less than one teaspoon. Sony’s thin-layer coating technology would allow this small quantity of paint to cover the entire car surface very thin and uniform.　

With magnetic particles as small as tens of nanometers, Sony’s thin-layer coating technology allows a few particles lying on top of each other (3-layer) to cover the entire tape surface without gaps, enabling the storage of large amounts of data.