Thermal, Optical, and Microstructural Properties of Magnetron Sputter-Deposited CuSi Films forApplication in Write-Once Blu-Ray Discs

Abstract

In this study, 16-nm-thick CuSi films were deposited at room temperature by DC magnetron sputtering. The thermal, optical, and microstructural properties of CuSi films were investigated in detail. Moreover, the CuSi film was further used as a recording layer for write-once blu-ray disc (BD-R) applications. Based on the result of the reflectivity–temperature measurement, the CuSi layer had a decrease in the reflectivity between 180 and 290 °C. The as-deposited CuSi film possessed the Cu3Si phase. After annealing at 300 °C, the Si atoms existed in the CuSi film segregated and crystallized to the cubic Si phase. The activation energy of Si crystallization in the CuSi film was determined to be 1.2 eV. The dynamic tests presented that the BD-R containing the CuSi recording layer had minimum jitter values of 7.0% at 6 mW and 7.2% at 9 mW, respectively, for 1× and 4× recording speeds. This reveals that the CuSi film has great potential in BD-R applications.