More Memory for Less Money - Isis Project No 4479

Technique for making super-density rewritable optical discs.

Invention Applications

Laser light can amorphise crystalline areas on a disc and induce novel nanostructures in the specially doped layer. The Oxford technology combines the resultant increase of information density in the doped layer with the reversible and fast read/write times of existing phase-change memory materials.

An Oxford invention can now substantially increase the information storage capacity for all existing rewritable optical storage disk technologies. The invention involves a technique to dope the disk material, combined with a rapid read/write access technique. The target device applications are existing multilayer DVD and Blu-Ray – and emerging holographic and 3D optical disks – to meet the needs of the important games and media market.

The market need

The games and media industry, in common with all information technology users, demands better and cheaper digital content storage and transfer. Applications able to benefit from the Oxford invention include existing and new formats of video reproduction (4K*, HD and 3D HD), long term digital data storage/archiving, video games and software reproduction; a market estimated to grow at four times the rate of magnetic or solid state media.

Additional information layer

The Oxford invention exploits the formation of novel nanostructures in specially doped rapid phase-change memory materials such as Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) to store additional bits of information in the same device volume. An enhancement of 50% – 100% in information storage capacity is possible using this simple information access and storage technique, which has full backwards compatibility with existing technology. Inserting this invention into industrial processes to manufacture optical disks would require minimal modification to existing plants, and would extend the technology life of these expensive assets.

Readiness for market

An international patent application with 29 claims has been filed. A Proof of Concept project is in work to show technical viability and commercial potential. Domain know-how is available to support commercial exploitation of the invention and derivative IP in collaboration with the chosen industrial partner. To contact the Technology Transfer Manager, please use the link below.

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