Recent developments in thermal modelling of high-speed dye recording

Research in optical data storage is mainly driven by the desire for higher data capacity and higher data transfer rates. To accelerate the research progress on dye recording, a basic understanding of the physical principles is inevitable. Thermal modelling is an important tool, since dye recording is based on thermally induced irreversible transformations in a thin recording layer. In addition, we can use thermal modelling to anticipate future needs, like write strategy and recording stack optimisation. For high-speed recording, several issues such as in-track and cross-track thermal interference may limit the data transfer rate and may impose limitations on higher data capacity formats, such as DVD+R and DVR-R. Recent developments in the thermal modelling of dye recording are discussed in this paper. A method is proposed to ´calibrate´ the thermal model by using measured transition write powers, determined from DC-write recorder measurements, and the corresponding transition temperatures. Additional transition powers were determined from atomic force microscopy (AFM) analyses. Furthermore, we present measurements indicating a temperature-dependent absorption of the recording dye and show first modelling results.