A Feasibility Study on the Use of Amorphous Silicon as Optical Recording Medium

Abstract
We have shown that amorphous silicon (a-Si) prepared by the plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method underwent an 80 dB enhancement in transmission when subjected to heat treatment and laser annealing. As this characteristic has a high potential in the optical disk application, careful studies of contrast transmission with respect to annealing power density, sample film thickness, and probing wavelength are presentted. We further prove with Raman scattering that this enhancement is indeed due to the laser induced amorphous-to-crystalline phase transition.