Optical Disk Pickup

Abstract

An optical pickup is the key device in a compact disk player, which consists of a high numerical aperture objective lens, a laser diode chip, photo diode chips, a two-axis mechanical actuator for focusing and tracking of the objective lens, optical systems for focusing error signal detection, and tracking error signal detection. As the target of the optical disk system is to focus the laser beam as small as possible for larger memory capacity, keeping the wave front aberration within the Marechel criterion from the laser facet to the objective lens is a very important technology. The chapter aims to develop a new head structure using the microlens and metallic film grating for the surface plasmon enhancement. The integrated optical head of vertical cavity surface emitting laser and microprobe array has been modified to increase the optical throughput with the patterned two-dimensional metal grating by the surface plasmon resonance effect.