<title>Erasable Optical Liquid Crystal Disc Memory</title>

Abstract

An erasable optical disc memory with smectic liquid crystal (LC) as the active medium has been fabricated and tested. Using appropriate dark field optics, we have demonstrated writing, reading and erasing at data rates of 13.5 MHz with a bit spacing of 1.25 microns. Although not all problems with this memory have been solved, we think the concept is viable with an expanded research effort in materials and system aspects.