Writing process in ablative optical recording.

The hole formation mechanism in thin films for optical recording is studied based on the energy balance between the surface tension gradient driven force and various opposing forces. A more rigorous energy calculation using the exact temperature profiles obtained by the numerical solution to the heat equation, has shown that the inertial dissipation energy is more important than the viscous energy. This improved calculation correctly predicts the threshold energy dependence on film thickness. This is an important result, since the surface tension gradient driven optical writing model has not been widely accepted due to the controversy in the thickness dependency of the threshold energy. Specifically, the previous model predicted that the thinner the film was, the lower the sensitivity would be, which is an opposite result to the experimental observation.