Recording Characteristics, Microstructure, and Crystallization Kinetics of Ge/GeCu Recording Film Used for Write-Once Blu-Ray Disc

A Ge(67)Cu(33) (16 nm) layer and a Ge (3 nm)/Ge(67)Cu(33) (16 nm) bilayer were grown by sputtering at room temperature and used as the recording films for write-once blue laser media. In comparison to the crystallization temperature of Ge in a GeCu film (380.7 °C–405.1 °C), the crystallization temperature of Ge in a Ge/GeCu bilayer could be further decreased to 333.7 °C–382.8 °C. The activation energies of Ge crystallization were 3.51 eV ± 0.05 eV and 1.50 eV ± 0.04 eV for the GeCu and the Ge/GeCu films, respectively, indicating that the Ge/GeCu bilayer possesses a higher feasibility in high-speed optical recording applications. Moreover, the lower activation energy would lead to a larger grain size of Ge crystallization in the Ge/GeCu bilayer after the annealing process. Between the as-deposited and the annealed states, the optical contrasts (@ 405 nm) of the GeCu and the Ge/GeCu films were 26.0% and 47.5%, respectively. This reveals that the Ge/GeCu bilayer is more suitable for the recording film of a write-once blu-ray disc (BD-R) in comparison with the GeCu film. Based on the dynamic tests performed for 2× and 4× recording speeds, the optimum jitter values of the BD-R with the Ge/GeCu recording film were 7.4% at 6.3 mW and 7.6% at 8.6 mW, respectively.