title: Ultra-high density optical data storage in common transparent plastics.
abstract: The ever-increasing demand for high data storage capacity has spurred research on development of innovative technologies and new storage materials. Conventional GByte optical discs (DVDs and Bluray) can be transformed into ultrahigh capacity storage media by encoding multi-level and multiplexed information within the three dimensional volume of a recording medium. However, in most cases the recording medium had to be photosensitive requiring doping with photochromic molecules or nanoparticles in a multilayer stack or in the bulk material. Here, we show high-density data storage in commonly available plastics without any special material preparation. A pulsed laser was used to record data in micron-sized modified regions. Upon excitation by the read laser, each modified region emits fluorescence whose intensity represents 32 grey levels corresponding to 5 bits. We demonstrate up to 20 layers of embedded data. Adjusting the read laser power and detector sensitivity storage capacities up to 0.2 TBytes can be achieved in a standard 120 mm disc.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Advanced Research Complex, 25 Templeton Street, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Deepak L N
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Kallepalli
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Advanced Research Complex, 25 Templeton Street, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5, Ontario, Canada.|Department of Physics, King Khalid University, P.O. Box 9004, Abha, Saudi Arabia.
authors.forename: Ali M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Alshehri
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation, University of Ottawa, 10 Marie Curie, Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Daniela T
authors.initials: DT
authors.lastname: Marquez
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Advanced Research Complex, 25 Templeton Street, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Lukasz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Andrzejewski
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Centre for Catalysis Research and Innovation, University of Ottawa, 10 Marie Curie, Ottawa, K1N 6N5, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Juan C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Scaiano
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Advanced Research Complex, 25 Templeton Street, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, K1N6N5, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Ravi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bhardwaj