Temperature profile of the multilayer structure irradiated by pulsed laser

Abstract

Two programs are developed to calculate the tem- perature profile, as well as the reflectance, transmittance and absorption of a given multilayer film structure, in order to better understand the laser energy distribution between the reflectance, transmittance and absorption in each film layer. An inorganic Blu-ray recordable disc (BD-R) structure is used as a practical demonstration of the multilayer struc- ture. The reflectance and absorption of the BD-R structure exhibit opposite trends and oscillate repeatedly with varying lower or upper dielectric layer thickness while the rest of the film thickness remains unchanged. The energy absorption in an absorbed layer depends on the thickness of the dielectric layers, its relative position in the structure and the extinction coefficient of its optical constant. The total absorption ratio of its maximum to minimum can be over 3 when changing the lower dielectric layer thickness of the studied structure. The layer thickness acts as an energy valve to control the energy flow into the multilayer structure. The thermal pro- file of the multilayer film structure irradiated by a pulsed laser is calculated at different positions in the film layers with time. The calculated temperatures in the recording al- loy layer exhibit linear relationship with the applied power level. The effect of the laser duration time on the tempera- ture increase in the recording layer is significant in the first few nanoseconds and becomes saturated if the heat balance is established in the structure. The calculated temperature is consistent with the experimental recording result when the structure is recorded at 4-time BD-R recording speed.