Ultra-high density optical data storage in common transparent plastics

Abstract

The ever-increasing demand for high data storage capacity has spurred research on development of innovative technologies and new storage materials. Conventional GByte optical discs (DVDs and Bluray) can be transformed into ultrahigh capacity storage media by encoding multi-level and multiplexed information within the three dimensional volume of a recording medium. However, in most cases the recording medium had to be photosensitive requiring doping with photochromic molecules or nanoparticles in a multilayer stack or in the bulk material. Here, we show high-density data storage in commonly available plastics without any special material preparation. A pulsed laser was used to record data in micron-sized modified regions. Upon excitation by the read laser, each modified region emits fluorescence whose intensity represents 32 grey levels corresponding to 5 bits. We demonstrate up to 20 layers of embedded data. Adjusting the read laser power and detector sensitivity storage capacities up to 0.2 TBytes can be achieved in a standard 120 mm disc.

No‐Interference Reading for Optical Information Storage and Ultra‐Multiple Anti‐Counterfeiting Applications by Designing Targeted Recombination in Charge Carrier Trapping Phosphors

“…Some other advanced multiplexing techniques have also been proposed, in order to obtain high capacity data storage within the same storage volume by using multi‐dimensional space, such as the third spatial coordinate, grayscale, multi‐spectrum, polarization, and so on . However, substantial improvements in these technologies are still needed to satisfy the requirements for practical applications.…”

Programmable microscale stiffness pattern of flat polymeric substrates by temperature-memory technology

“…Polymeric substrates comprising local mechanical stiffness pattern or nanostructural features are intensively investigated in the context of applications such as haptic displays (touchpads), stretchable electronics, mechanical and optical data storage devices, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] or as instructive cell substrates guiding mechanosensitive (stem) cells. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] While individual cells can react to structural features of few nanometers in size and mechanical differences in the Pascal (Pa) range, [9,14] the tactile sensitivity of a human finger is only capable of detecting structural features above 10 nm and local mechanics in the kPa regime.…”

Inducing lasing in organic materials with low optical gain by three-dimensional plasmonic nanocavity arrays

“…We noted that besides the ionic liquid, the PMMA in 3D wire-hole array also plays a role as the gain medium. It has been reported that the irradiation by high-energy electrons or laser beams on PMMA results in fluorescent moieties [34] whose emission spectrum spans from 550 to 750 nm [35]. That's why two emission peaks remain observable (but not lasing) at 580 and 630 nm when removing the ionic liquid.…”