Abstract

Electron-trapping (ET) materials are optical storage materials developed by Quantex. When ET materials are exposed to visible light (e.g., 488 nm), electrons from the ground state will be excited and then captured by thermally stable traps. Subsequent exposure to IR light (e.g., 1064 nm) excites and releases the trapped electrons to the ground state with the emission of orange-to-red light. We have investigated a new architecture that is based on a stacked layer scheme. In this architecture, a two-dimensional page memory is individually stored in a particular ET layer by means of visible light. The layer can be selectively read by using IR light. In contrast to the volume holographic approach, the two-dimensional emission from the ET layer is directly detected as the recalled page memory. The page memory can be written by properly imaging the page composer onto a specific layer with blue laser light at 488 nm. To read out the memory on a specific layer, a slice of 1064 nm IR beam is addressed into the ET layer from the side of the stacked-layer medium. The orange emission (630 nm) corresponding to the written page memory at that layer is emitted as a result of the IR stimulation.

© 1990 Optical Society of America