| 摘要 |
A layer (6) of ion-exchanger glass having stored energy in the form of compressive stress is utilized as an optical memory. When localized portions of the layer of ion-exchanged glass are heated sufficiently, they soften and release the compressive stress energy to form localized, solid surface bumps (2). The presence or absence of surface bumps provides binary data storage. Since the surface bumps scatter incident light differently from flat portions (4) of the glass surface, and since the glass is self-supporting and rugged, the ion-exchanged glass memory can provide high signal-to-noise ratio and archival storage. Such a data store is cheap because of its use of a readily available, low cost material; i.e., glass, as the storage medium. |
