Fabrication Of Nanometric Aperture Arrays By Wet Anisotropic Etching For Near-Field Optical Memory Application

Ln conventional optical memory, the areal recording density is ultimately limited by diffraction of light since the recorded pit size depends on that of the focused laser beam spot. On the other hand, near-field optical memory currently receives a great attention as a means to increase the recording density drastically without limitation by diffraction since the pit is formed by a localized light on the apex of probe. The near-field optical memory of recording density as high as 45 Gb/in2 was demonstrated [l], where tapered optical fiber probe with a subwavelength aperture on its end was employed.