Sharp Develops Blue-Violet Semiconductor Laser for Blu-ray [Could Enable Triple, Quadruple-Layer Blu-ray Discs with 75GB to 100GB Recordable Capacity]

There is no doubt that the evolution of the laser-read high-definition recordable disc took a drastic leap forward with the development and eventual mass marketing of Sony’s Blu-ray technology. Who wouldn’t want something that provides pure picture perfection on your big-screen LCD (or LED, or plasma…) television and unsurpassed audio reproduction through your 1000W 5.0 surround sound speaker system? Enough said. But what if the inherent limitations of the technology like storage capacity threaten to stifle the growth of this still infantile platform? That’s where scientists like those at Sharp come in.

These very same scientists announced today at the 70th Autumn Meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics (Partaaaayyy!) that they had developed the next generation of laser for use with Blu-ray discs and it’s definitely a good thing. The new blue-violet semiconductor laser, whose optical output is as high as 500mW under pulsed operation, was designed specifically for use in Blu-ray Disc recorders. Sharp enhanced the optical output by using a new method of processing the edge face of a resonator. Hold on now, this is about to go nerd hyperdrive.

Normally, a dielectric film protects the edge face of a crystal in a semiconductor laser. For the new laser, Sharp found a way to form an aluminum oxynitride (AlON) film between the edge face of the semiconductor laser and the dielectric film by a sputtering method and realized an epitaxial growth where the growth axis of the laser’s crystal corresponds to that of the AlON crystal. Wow, I think I need a minute to come down from that one. So what does it all mean?

For starters, this new laser could lead to triple-layer or even quad-layer Blu-ray discs. It would not only allow a drive to read twice as deep as current dual-layer Blu-ray drives but would let it write at 8X speed on all four layers. And what it does for storage capacity will definitely blow your mind. With the current technology we are able to squeeze in 25GB for each layer of a Blu-ray disc. Not bad, I know. This latest advancement by Sharp would increase this capacity up to 75GB or even 100GB. Now that’s something that has both data storage specialists and moviemakers alike pretty excited. Especially given that the latter was often limited when recording long-format movies with tons of extras in full HD.

Sharp has not yet decided when to mass-produce the new blue-violet semiconductor laser mostly because the specs for triple or more layer Blu-ray discs haven’t been developed yet. And just to let people know that it’s not their fault that you don’t have this technology yet, the company claimed that it is now ready to commercialize the laser.