Light-sensitive organic systems and multilayer polymer structures for optical recording media

This paper presents latest own results in the development of reversible photochromic and irreversible photofluorescent polymer systems providing fabrication of multilayer recording media for 3D optical memory with super high information capacity. It was shown that synthesized thermal irreversible photochromic diarylethenes into plastic binders allow to prepare photochromic polymer layers providing nondestructive refractive read-out of optical information. These photochromic polymer layers were used for preparation of six-layer recording media tested with the positive results using the framed optical device. This device imitated layer-by-layer writing, erasure and read-out of optical signals. Experimental evidences for making photochromic polymer layers based on a mixture of photochromic diarylethene and dye - phosphor with nondestructive fluorescent read-out are presented too. Polymer systems based on light-sensitive chromones manifest an irreversible photochemical transformations of these non-fluorescing compounds into the fluorescent products under UV irradiation. Received results open perspectives for making multilayer optical discs for bitwise working (based on photochromic systems) and archival (based on irreversible photofluorescent systems) optical memory with information capacity more 1 TB.