Near-field optical recording of photochromic materials is carried out using a scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM). We constructed a simplified yet fully functional SNOM by installing bent cantilever fiber probes in an atomic force microscope. Photochromic diarylethene films are used as re-writable near-field recording media, and we successfully record erasable recording marks having a minimum of 600 nm width in a writing time as short as 30 ms.
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Kim et al. (2002) studied this question.