Thermal engineering of electron-trapping materials for “Smart-Write-In” optical data storage

Abstract

Electron-trapping materials (ETMs) are one of the most ideal candidate media to cope with the explosive growth of data storage demand. However, distribution and density of their traps are still unsatisfactory, restricting practical application severely. In fact, thermally assisted write-in may be an effective method, but so far there has been no detailed report for optical storage applications. In this paper, detailed investigations are carried out based on BaSi2O5:Eu2+ and its co-doped system. Under thermal-assistance, in detail, storage densities of BaSi2O5:Eu2+ increase from several times to hundreds of times with different write-in wavelengths and powers. Meanwhile, the write-in wavelength is extended from 254 nm to 365 nm, 395 nm and even blue region, the power can also be reduced from milliwatts (mW) to several microwatts (uW). Besides, it can also suppress shallow trap filling and enhance deep trap filling. These properties can not only help to improve the above issues, but also proved a new strategy to realize super-resolution multi-value optical storage.