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20 Apr 2004
A Blu-ray disc which can be cut up by a pair of scissors is unveiled.
The two Japanese firms Sony and Toppan Printing have developed a next generation optical disc that is made from a paper substrate. The 25 GB Blu-ray disc contains 51% paper by weight and can store up to 2 hours of high-definition television.
Unveiled at the Optical Data Storage 2004 conference in Monterey, California this week, the new disc offer several advantages over its plastic counterpart.
“Since a paper disc can be cut by scissors easily, it is simple to preserve data security when disposing of the disc,” explained Hideaki Kawai, head of Toppan’s corporate R&D division. “Using printing technology on paper also allows a high level artistic label printing on the optical disc.”
Aside from the opportunities for making eye-catching discs that are easy to cut up, the paper-discs could also prove to be cheaper to make and more environmentally friendly. These are important issues as the worldwide production of optical discs is currently estimated at approximately 20 billion per year.
“Basically, the quality of performance to read HD [high definition] content on the disc is the same as a plastic disc,” said a spokesman for Sony. “As a next step we are continuing our efforts to improve the quality and volume of the paper in the disc. We are also working on ways to make the disc last longer.”
Author
Oliver Graydon is editor of Optics.org and Opto & Laser Europe magazine.
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