Photostability of Near-Infrared Absorbing Organic Dyes in New Optical Media

Abstract

Publisher Summary Nowadays colorants having absorption in the near-infrared region have become more important as the use has grown for laser diodes that have oscillation wavelengths in 780–830 nm in practical systems, both for reading and writing of the informations. Particularly, the near-infrared absorbing dyes have been provided interesting research in optical disc memory used for the storage of large amounts of data and laser printers with high speed. The chapter discusses photostability of functional dyes on polymer substrate and describes the basic principle of the optical DRAW disc. The DRAW disc that offers the facility to make one recording consists of a plastic substrate, such as polycarbonate or polymethylmethacrylate and a recording layer made in amorphous colorants. The thickness of the recording layer is approximately 30–100 nm. The principle of the optical DRAW disc memory, called “heat mode system,” is shown in the chapter. In this system, microscopic pits in the coloured recording layer of a disc are formed by thermal energy transformed from photo energy of a laser.