High-Density Optical Data Storage
Photonic Materials Research at UCF

One of the areas of our materials research focus entails the fabrication of high-density data recording disks. These next generation DVD-type storage disks can hold unprecedented volumes of data. Dr. Kevin D. Belfield’s molecular electronics research group, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Army, are investigating these new materials.

How are the high-density storage disks different from conventional storage disks? The high-density disks encode, manipulate, and retrieve information at the molecular level, as opposed to current semiconductor techniques, which rely on miniaturization of bulk devices such as integrated circuits.

When will these disks reach the market? Two US patent applications have been granted on the technology and others are pending, which could pave the way for next generation, ultra high-density optical data storage for tomorrow’s computational needs.

Selected publications:

[1] Corredor, C. C.; Huang, Z. L.; Belfield, K. D. "Two-Photon 3-D Optical Data Storage via Fluorescence Modulation of an Efficient Fluorene Dye by a Photochromic Diarylethene". Advanced Materials,  2006, 18, 2910-2914. [This work has been highlighted by Nature Photonics].

[2] Corredor, C. C.; Belfield, K. D.; Bondar, M. V.; Przhonska, O. V.; Hernandez, F. E.; Kachkovsky, O. D. “One and Two-Photon Photochromism of 3,4-Bis-(2,4,5-trimethyl-thiophen-3-yl)furan-2,5-dione”. Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Chemistry, 2006, 184, 177-183.

[3] Belfield, K. D.; Bondar, M. V.; Corredor, C. C.; Hernandez, F. E.; Przhonska, O. V.; Yao, S. “Two-photon photochromism of a diarylethene derivative enhanced by Förster’s resonance energy transfer from two-photon absorbing fluorenes”. ChemPhysChem., 2006, 7, in press.

[4] Belfield, K. D.; Schafer, K. J. "A New Photosensitive Polymeric Material for Optical Data Storage using Multichannel Two-Photon Fluorescence Readout". Chemistry of Materials, 2002, 14, 3656-3662.

[5] Belfield, K. D.; Liu, Y.; Negres, R. A.; Fan, M.; Pan, G.; Hagan, D. J.; Hernandez, F. E.; "Two-photon photochromism of an organic material for holographic recording". Chemistry of Materials, 2002, 14, 3663-3667.

[6] Belfield, K. D.; Ren, X.; Hagan, D. J.; Van Stryland, E. W.; Dubikovsky, V.; Miesak, E. J. "Near-IR Two-Photon Photoinitiated Polymerization Using a Fluorone/Amine Initiating System". Journal of the American Chemcial Society, 2000, 122, 1217-1218.

Two-photon 3D Optical Data Storage

Figure 1. A schematic illustration of the two-photon 3D optical data storage system

Description: A two-photon 3D optical data storage system consisting of a bichromophoric mixture of diarylethene and fluorene derivative as the storage medium is domestrated here. Binary information bits were recorded throughout all three dimensions of the storage medium by two-photon localized excitation on the diarylethene molecules, transforming the closed form of diarylethene into the open form. The readout method is based on the modulation of the two-photon fluorescence emission of fluorene by the closed form of diarylethene.[By Dr. Zhen-Li Huang and Claudia C. Corredor, University of Central Florida]

Figure 2. Two-photon 3D readout of the recorded data

Description: This 3D image was reconstructed using 3D constructor (Ver. 5.1, MediaCybernetics Inc.) from successively two-photon fluorescence imaging (readout) of 33 XY data planes along the axial direction (1 micron distance between each image). The principle for this novel two-photon 3D optical storage device was based on a bichromophoric mixture consisting of diaryletheneand fluorene derivative, suitable for recording data in thick storage media.  The open and closed forms of diarylethene codify the binary information.  The read-out method is based on the modulation of the two-photon fluorescence emission of fluorene by the closed form of diarylethene.  [By Dr. Zhen-Li Huang, University of Central Florida]