Micro-aperture surface emitting laser for near field optical data storage

An ultra-high density optical memory using near field optics has been attracting much interest for future data storage. Betzig and coworkers (1992) demonstrated optical recording by an optical scanning microscope (NSOM) and suggested the possibility of tera byte data storage. One of the authors (K. Goto) proposed (1998) a tera byte optical memory system using a VCSEL array. One of the key issues in the proposed optical disk system is to realize an optical head consisting of a 2-dimensional VCSEL array. In near-field optics memory, there still remains the difficulty in getting a high output power efficiently from a sub-wavelength sized aperture. It is especially important to realize a high efficiency VCSEL for optical heads by reducing the total power consumption in arrays. We proposed a metal aperture VCSEL for producing near field light with high efficiency. In the study, we carried out a near field analysis of a micro-aperture VCSEL and present some basic process technologies for realizing the proposed device.