Chiral Film Technology for Ultrahigh-Capacity & Ultrafast Retrieval Optical Storage

Reveo invented a novel optical storage technology that increases the storage capacity and data transfer rate by an order of 1,000 over that of the present-day CD-ROMs, while maintaining 'backward' compatibility. The technology uses the unique optical properties of chiral films to achieve wavelength division and polarization discrimination multiplexing of read channel signals. The storage medium, which can also be card or tape formats, consists of 1,000 or so information-carrying layers coated with a patterned chiral thin film. The chiral film is obtained with innovative vacuum deposition techniques. As an example, a 10-mm thick disc of diameter 120mm has a storage capacity of 650GBytes, if an infrared ("lambda" = 0.78um) laser is used for data retrieval. This corresponds to an equivalent volumetric density of 7GByte/cm(3). With parallel readout, a data transfer rate greater than 150GByte/s is possible. More importantly, the proposed optical storage technology can utilize advances in short-wavelength diode lasers to increase the storage capacity even further. Furthermore, the 'backward' compatibility provides a natural and viable migrating path for rapid introduction to the market.