Abstract

Recently many write-once (WO) storage media have been proposed and investigated, including organic dye and tellurium based alloy, etc. A metal island film is one of the potential WO storage media. It is composed of nanometer-size metal particles (i.e., islands) and exhibits a high reflectance and large absorptance due to the resonance of free electrons in the islands near the resonance wavelength. As the optical properties of the metal island films can be thermally changed, it is expected that an efficient heat-mode WO optical memory is realized by using them. Laser writing was already reported on gold (Au) island films with a 650 nm-Kr laser from the thermal transformation of Au islands [1] and on copper (Cu) island films with an 820 nm-laser diode from the oxidization of Cu islands [2,3].

© 1994 Optical Society of America