High Density Optical Disc Mastering Using Photobleachable Dye

The authors earlier developed a UV laser beam recorder (UV-LBR) and the mastering process for a high-density optical disc. Although it has sufficient resolution for the current digital versatile disc (DVD), the available resolution is not sufficient for the next generation DVD. Therefore, the authors have developed a new mastering process that can extend the resolution limit of the UV-LBR to realize the next generation DVD. It uses photobleachable dye (PBD) coated over a photoresist layer. In this paper, the effectiveness of the new multilayer mastering process is discussed, especially the writing ability of random data using 8/16-modulation. From the results of the experiments, the authors confirmed that the new process, which consists of a multilayer using PBD, has an advantage over the conventional process in the high-density recording, for a recording capacity of 13 Gbytes or greater.