Integrated Surface Emitting Laser Arrays with Flat-Tip Microprobes for the Near-Field Optical Data Storage
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Integrated Surface Emitting Laser Arrays with Flat-Tip Microprobes for the Near-Field Optical Data Storage Young-Joo Kim∗, Shu-Ying Ye, Kazuhiro Suzuki and Kenya Goto Dept. Information & Communication Technology, Tokai University 317 Nishino, Numazu, Shizuoka, 410-0395, Japan ∗ E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT Current optical data storage is challenging to increase its memory capacity and data transfer rate for realizing high-quality image and rapid service in the coming digital, multimedia and network era. To actualize more effective and simple data storage, a novel parallel near-field optical system has been proposed using vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) microprobe arrays. The new parallel optical system is based a multibeam recording head consisting of a VCSEL array with apertures of nanometer size as a near-field wave exit. We have developed some candidates for the parallel recording head, including the direct aperture formation on the VCSEL emitting surface and the preparation of microprobe arrays with flat-tip structure. The new flat-tip microprobe array has advantages for improving the optical efficiency and stabilizing the contact head system with optical media since it is prepared from semiconductor materials of high refractive index. Silicon nano-aperture probe array has been prepared successfully with the aperture size of 150 to 500nm using micro-fabrication techniques. We have also investigated the integrated microprobe array by the direct fabrication of flat-tip probes on the substrate of bottom emitting VCSEL arrays. Finally the reading mechanism has been studied theoretically using a finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation and an optical feedback effect of semiconductor lasers for the integrated microprobe VCSEL array. We believe this nano-aperture VCSEL probe array is sufficiently effective to be applied to the parallel recording head for the near-field optical data storage of a high data capacity and fast transfer rate.
INTRODUCTION Both a high data capacity and fast transfer rate are required in the fields of magnetic and optical data storage. In the last ten years, several near-field optical data storages have been developed to increase a data capacity using evanescent waves. However, these still have a limitation to speed up a data transfer rate to follow the ability of magnetic hard disk system. In order to overcome this speed barrier of optical data technology, some approaches such as 2-D parallel near-field recording and 3-D holographic system have been proposed and studied [1]. Since two dimensional array system which was proposed by our research group is based on a multibeam recording with the small spot size using the microprobe and VCSEL array, it has advantages for realizing both a fast data transfer rate and high memory capacity [2,3]. As shown in figure 1, the VCSEL array will be inclined at a specific angle (for example, 0.57Û for 100x100 array head) to the track direction to align all light sources on separate data tracks. In this array head, all l
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