ABSTRACT
Laser-induced phase transition of chalcogenide materials is the basis of the rewritable optical disk and can find important applica-tions in optical super-resolution and photolithography. This chapter focuses on the laser-induced phase transition phenomenon and its applications in optical data storage. It discusses in detail the physical mechanism of laser-induced phase transition and the time-resolved phase transition dynamics driven by laser pulses. The chapter also introduces the phase-change optical disk technology and some new optical memory functions based on phase-change materials. 7.1 Introduction: Phenomena and Applications
ductor films and the reversal of this crystalline state back to the
amorphous state using laser pulses [1] were reported two years after the discovery of the memory-type electrical switching effect observed by Ovshinsky [2]. In fact, more earlier, light pulse from an xenon flash lamp was found to drive this kind of phase transition except where the pulse width was longer by an order of magnitude (at the millisecond scale) [3].
