System of laser pump and synchrotron radiation probe microdiffraction to investigate optical recording process

We have developed a system of laser-pump and synchrotron radiation probe microdiffraction to investigate the phase-change process on a nanosecond time scale of Ge2Sb2Te5 film embedded in multi-layer structures, which corresponds to real optical recording media. The measurements were achieved by combining (i) the pump-laser system with a pulse width of 300 ps, (ii) a highly brilliant focused microbeam with wide peak-energy width (ΔE∕E ~ 2%) made by focusing helical undulator radiation without monochromatization, and (iii) a precise sample rotation stage to make repetitive measurements. We successfully detected a very weak time-resolved diffraction signal by using this system from 100-nm-thick Ge2Sb2Te5 phase-change layers. This enabled us to find the dependence of the crystal-amorphous phase change process of the Ge2Sb2Te5 layers on laser power.