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FLUROSCENT MULTILAYER DISC

BY SIDDHARTH SHANBHAG

RECAP: • What is FMD? • Why FMD? • Operating Principles. • Technological Process.

What is FMD? Fluorescent Multilayer disc is an optical disc that uses fluorescent rather than reflective material to store data. It is an three dimensional storage disc developed by Constellation 3D.

Why FMD? • Increased Disc capacity. •Quick parallel access and retrieval information. •Media tolerances.

Operating Principle: • The principle operation of FMD is based on a phenomenon of photochromism. • The laser beam when focused on the information material the material starts radiating than reflecting. • The laser beam causes the photochrome material to posses the fluorescent properties . • The fluorescence is caught up by a device called photo receiver.

• The usage of photochrome material increases the number of information layers do not make the signal worse which is not in case of other optical discs. • The developers state that with blue laser(480nm) it is possible to increase capacity to Terabytes on the disc. • This technology prevents the problem of interference since we are using photochrome material which posses the fluorescent properties.

Technological Process: There are two technological process in manufacturing of FMD:

• Hot Stamping. • Photo Polymerization.

HOT STAMPING:

The layer is pressed with polycarbonate and stamped twice with hot temperature. This forms two information layer with pits on each side and filled with fluorescent material.

PHOTO POLYMERIZATION: • The information layer generated is made of thin plastic film of 25-30micron in width. • The film is installed on a nickel matrix that carries the negative copy of information layers. • The photo polymer material is evenly brought in space b/w stamp surface and film, which generates pits after the polymer material is detached from stamp surface. • The pits generated is filled with fluorescent material and chemically processed.

• After the layers are filled with fluorescent material and attached to the base plate, it is covered with a protective layer which can be used for graphics decoration. • This process is carried out in order to prevent a physical contact with information layer on the edge of the disc this is filled with polymeric material. • This process is mainly based on light and polymer material.

FMD ARCHITECTURE: • Since the technology not based on the reflection, the multiple layers can be read on the same time.

LAYER DESCRIPTION:

• The disc consists of several polycarbonate layers connected to each other viz: Information layer, Protective layer and Inter Layer. • A layer contains pits which are filled with FM, laser focuses on certain layer and excites the fluorescent elements and the radiation is caught by Photo detector.

Comparison of Disc Layers:

Why Fluorescence not Reflective material? • No interference. • Solves signal degradation. • Increase in storage capacity.

Advantages of FMD: • Prevents problem of interference since it uses an incoherent fluorescent light. • Compatible with CD and DVD formats with more storage area and faster access. • Fluorescent technology do not require special manufacturing conditions. • Durability.

CD vs DVD vs FMD: PARAMETERS

CD

DVD

FMD

1. Disc diameter

120mm

120mm

120mm

2. Capacity

750MB

4GB

50GB+

650nm

480530nm

3. Wavelength 780nm

4. Distance b/w 1.6micron 0.85micron 0.80micro tracks n 5.No.of layers

1

2

12

Applications: • Data warehouses. • E-commerce related data mining. • HDTV. • Mobile phones and PDA. • PVR

FMD HARDWARE:

FMD drive

FMC PDA

FMD Player

FMC/D laptop

FMD READ DEVICE: • The interesting feature of the FMD is parallel reading. • The sequence of bits is recorded not along a track but deep into layers in parallel reading. • Reading process is carried out with the help of a solar cell. • This device can read low-power fluorescence of up to ten MHz.

• The below diagram shows the parallel reading device. • The reading speed reaches 1 Gigabit/s.

ABOUT THE COMPANY • Company C-3D was founded in 1995. • First FMD production -120mm in diameter and 140GB memory with speed of 1GB/s. • The company has opened offices in New York California, Florida. • The company has around 60 patents. • The C-3D declared bankruptcy and the company was acquired by D Data Inc.

CHRONOLOGY: • 1999 first published in September. • 2001 first license given to Sony. • 2002 august C3D disappeared. • 2003 D Data Inc acquired the patents of C3D and developed HD DMD - Digital Multilayer Disk. KEY PEOPLE OF C3D: • Chairman: Itzhak Yaakov • President & CEO: Eugene Levich • Interim Chief Operating Officer: Michael Goldberg • General Manager of Products: Dr. Ingolf Sander

Disadvantage: • Initial cost of the fluorescent material is more than reflective material that is used in CD,DVD. • This makes the product costlier than other storage devices.

Conclusion: The rapid technological development that is taking place in storage devices has also made the man think about the needs and the requirements for the storage devices. But for now the FMD, which can provide us with gigabytes(GB) of storage space compared to CD and DVD seems to be an enticing solution for the storage masses.

References: • www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki. • www.ixbtlabs.com/articles . • www.seminartopic.org. • www.ebook-searchengine.com/fluroscent-multilayerdisc.