Carbon-Coated Tellurium for Optical Data Storage

A highly durable optical disk has been developed for data archiving. This optical disk uses tellurium as the write layer and carbon as a dielectric and oxidation prevention layer. The sandwich style CTeC film was deposited on polycarbonate and silicon substrates by plasma sputtering. These films were then characterized with AFM, SEM, TEM, EELS, and ellipsometry and were tested for writability and longevity. Results show the films were uniform in physical structure, stable, and able to form permanent pits. Data was written to a disk and successfully read back in a commercial DVD drive.