A British technology firm has come up with a plan to use platinum as a means for creating a storage system on a nanoscale.

The Cambridge-based outfit NanoMagnetics is experimenting with the use of biological materials to create storage capacity at a molecular level.

Chief executive and founder Dr Eric Mayes told ZDNet UK that the current development involved the installation of platinum particles in order to generate a data storage system.

"We've got little rust particles that are carried by a protein ball. We can take out the rust and put in platinum alloys or other metallic materials," he explained. "Each particle is uniform in size."

NanoMagnetics says it is hoping to link up with manufacturers in order to utilise the technology in finished products.

Some experts say the technology could potentially be used to link a series of multi-gigabyte chips, dramatically boosting the data capacity for some devices.