Recording and readout of a cholesteric liquid crystal based multilayer disk

A novel approach to optical storage based on layering of cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) media is being investigated. CLC media have been chosen due to their unique property of selective reflection, whereby a CLC film reflects light of a characteristic wavelength and polarization handedness with near-zero loss while transmitting all other light. This new technology has the potential of enabling terabyte storage on a single optical disk. A two-layer disk with 5 µm data marks was recorded and crosstalk-free readout was demonstrated by selecting the correct circular polarization state of a 514 nm laser.