The fabrication of spectral storage materials presents a great challenge of tailoring the optical properties of a solid at the atomic scale. We show that by a careful choice of a host material and the luminescent rare earth centers created in it, thin film structures can be fabricated using pulsed laser deposition. It is shown that these structures can be tailored to satisfy the material requirements for the power-gated spectral holeburning, one of the most successful techniques for the spectral storage. In the form of multilayer thin film structures, these tailored materials can provide surface storage densities exceeding a terabit per square inch. Possibilities of tailoring new rare earth centers that can further multiply the storage densities have been discussed. Experimental data has been presented for the fabrication and characterization of such impurity based europium centers in MgS and CaS by chemically controlled pulsed laser deposition.

Date Published: 1 March 2007
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 6482, Advanced Optical and Quantum Memories and Computing IV, 648204 (1 March 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.716386

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6482:
Advanced Optical and Quantum Memories and Computing IV
Zameer U. Hasan; Alan E. Craig; Selim M. Shahriar; Hans J. Coufal, Editor(s)