Abstract
The inherent three-dimensional features associated with two-photon absorption provides an excellent basis upon which to combine spatially-resolved, two-photon induced photoacid generation and fluorescence quenching with nondestructive two-photon fluorescence imaging, eliminating the need for a fixing step. A significant advantage of this approach is that solutions for optical storage can take advantage of new spatial and spectral dimensions. In addition, this multilayer approach provides optical memories that use the volume of the medium by recording data as binary planes stacked in 3-D. The use of transparent materials as storage media facilitates the use of a large number of layers. The data is stored in discrete bits in the plane, but also through the volume. Relative to a one-photon-based process, much higher information densities can be obtained by writing multiple layers of bits; this is due to, first, the excitation light penetrates deeply into the material, and is absorbed only at the focal region, and secondly, Rayleigh scattering is reduced for the longer wavelengths used for two-photon excitation. The quadratic dependence of two-photon excitation on incident intensity relative to single-photon excitation is illustrated in Figure 1. The more highly localized two-photon excitation can be observed in the focal volume.
© 2003 Optical Society of America
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