Experimental research on near-field optical storage and virtual probe based on solid immersion lens

Abstract

Near-field optical recording based on solid immersion lens (SIL) system has attracted much attention in the high-density storage in recent years. The recording spot size can be decreased using the SIL effectively. The SIL near-field optical storage has advantages of high density, mass storage capacity and compatibility with many technologies well developed. We have set up a SIL near-field static recording system. The experimental result with recording spot size 200 nm is presented. The influence factors in SIL near-field recording system are also discussed in the paper. Near-field optical virtual probe (NFOVP) is a kind of virtual probe by the evanescence wave interference and aperture diffraction based on SIL. It has a great potential in near-field optical data storage. In this paper, the most important characteristics of the NFOVP has been revealed through numerical simulation. The FWHM of central peak, the size of near-field virtual probe is constant whatever the distance increases in a certain range so that the critical nano-separation control in the SIL near-field data storage system can be relaxed. A realization model of NFOVP based on SIL system for data storage has been proposed and the simulation result based on this model is presented.