Abstract

The first commercial shipments of the ISO standard 5.25" Rewritable Optical Media began in 1988. It wasn't until 1993 that the "2X" double capacity product was introduced. Much of the early disk development activity centered around the thin films. Due to the large performance margins built into the disk/drive system, many of the substrate related issues could be ignored. With the introduction of the "2X" optical disk and the current development efforts on the "4X" product, the substrate quality has been identified as a limiting factor in disk performance. The media manufacturers are presented with the challenge of having to improve substrate performance to accommodate the higher data densities, shorter wavelength lasers, and increased disk rotation rates, at the same time migration of hard disk and tape technology is forcing improvement in the cost-per-Megabyte of Optical systems.

© 1994 Optical Society of America