Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Fumiya Ohmi

Yuki Nakamura

Katsuyuki Yamada

Yujiro Kaneko

Eiji Noda

Kenichi Aihara

Kyohji Hattori

Hiroko Iwasaki

Satoshi Mizukami

Yukio Ide

Michihisa Takahashi

Yoshihiko Hotta

Tohru Yashiro

Masahiro Hayashi

Atsuyuki Watada

Ippei Matsumoto

The present invention provides an optical recording material allows for obtaining excellent recording signal properties even at high-speed recording and is excellent in durability in both a single-sided single layer optical recording medium and a single-sided two-layer optical recording medium having a first recording layer and a second recording layer. The optical recording material contains a cyanine compound having a specific structure and a squarylium compound as dyes for optical recording layers.

Optical recording material, optical recording medium, and recording and reproducing method of optical recording medium

A phase-change optical disc formatting device which formats a phase-change optical disc so that signal characteristics of an area in which at least one of a file structure and application data is to be recorded are substantially equal to signal characteristics of a format area. A phase-change optical disc formatting method including: formatting a phase-change optical disc so that signal characteristics of an area in which at least one of a file structure and application data is to be recorded are substantially equal to signal characteristics of a format area. A phase-change optical disc formatted such that signal characteristics of an area of the phase-change optical disc in which at least one of a file structure and application data is to be recorded are substantially equal to signal characteristics of a format area of the phase-change optical disc.

Formatting of phase-change optical disc for improved signal characteristics

An object of the present invention is to provide an optical information recording medium by which the getting thereof in and out of a reproducing apparatus and the reproducing of recoding data can be stably and reliably performed and the recording content can be visually confirmed, and which has the reversible display function of performing at least one of the recording, erasing and rewriting of the display which is excellent in the uniformity of the image, easily, with a good appearance and without damaging the optical information recording medium; a manufacturing method of the above-noted optical information recording medium; and an image processing method using the above-noted optical information recording medium. For this object, the present invention provides the optical information recording medium comprising a substrate, an optical information layer disposed on the substrate and a reversible thermosensitive layer in which at least a part of the information recorded in the optical information layer can be recorded in such a manner that the part of the information can be visually recognized, in this order; and further a cushion layer in at least a part of the space between the optical information layer and the reversible thermosensitive layer.

Optical information recording medium, manufacturing method thereof and image processing method

A method and apparatus for initializing optical recording media is provided that detects the intensity of a reflective light off of an optical recording media and analyzes the initializing condition based on the detected intensity during an initializing process. The light is radiated on a rotating phase-change optical recording medium. The light may be moved in a radial direction of the optical recording medium. The detected intensity of the reflected light may be used to identify crystallized portions and amorphous portions of the optical media. The initialization process can be adaptively controlled to ensure proper initialization. If desired, re-initialization can be limited to those areas detected to be outside of the predetermined parameters.

Method and apparatus for initializing optical recording media

A method for formatting a phase-change optical disk, using an apparatus for formatting phase-change optical disk, which apparatus includes (a) a drive control substrate on which a CPU for controlling an optical disk drive, a ROM for storing data, and an interface are mounted, and (b) an optical disk drive, is provided, and the method is carried out conducting power calibration a plurality of times to obtain a plurality of recording powers corresponding to the number of the power calibrations conducted, calculating an average recording power from the plurality of recording powers, multiplying the average recording power by a predetermined coefficient to obtain a recording power for formatting, and formatting a phase-change optical disk in accordance with the recording power for formatting. The phase-change optical disk formatted by this method is also provided.

Method for formatting optical information recording medium, at recording power less than recording power to be used for recording, and recording medium formatted by the method

A method of initializing a phase-change optical information recording medium is provided, using an optical system incorporating a semiconductor laser device. The laser device is characterized by a specified spatial power distribution. In a spatial distribution of the laser power focused on the recording medium, in the direction perpendicular to guide tracks the laser device preferably has less average smaller in both end regions of the spatial distribution, which have each 10% of the width at half maximum of the distribution, than the average in the center region of the full width at half maximum of the distribution.

Initialization of phase-change optical recording medium

A method and apparatus for initializing optical recording media is provided that detects the intensity of a reflective light off of an optical recording media and analyzes the initializing condition based on the detected intensity during an initializing process. The light is radiated on a rotating phase-change optical recording medium. The light maybe moved in a radial direction of the optical recording medium. The detected intensity of the reflected light may be used to identify crystallized portions and amorphous portions of the optical media. The initialization process can be adaptively controlled to ensure proper initialization. If desired, re-initialization can be limited to those areas detected to be outside of the predetermined parameters.

An optical-disk formatting apparatus includes an optical disk drive which formats a recordable optical disk by emitting a light beam to the optical disk. A format-data storing unit stores application-specific format data into a storage device. A format-data writing unit writes the application-specific format data, stored in the storage device, to the optical disk by controlling the optical disk drive after the formatting of the optical disk is normally complete.

Apparatus and method for formatting an optical disk with format data written to the optical disk

An optical recording medium capable of recording and erasing information, includes a first dielectric layer, a recording layer, a second dielectric layer, a light reflection and heat dissipation layer, and an overcoat layer which are successively overlaid on a substrate, the recording layer including a phase-change recording material which includes as constituent elements Ag, In, Sb, Te, and N and/or O with the respective atomic % thereof being .alpha., .beta., .gamma., .delta. and .epsilon. (the total atomic % of N and/or O), which are in the relationship of: 0&lt;.alpha..ltoreq.6, 3.ltoreq..beta..ltoreq.15, 50.ltoreq..gamma..ltoreq.65, 20.ltoreq..delta..ltoreq.35, 0.ltoreq..epsilon..ltoreq.5, provided that .alpha.+.beta.+.gamma.+.delta.+.epsilon.=100, and (2) having a recrystallization upper-limit linear speed in a range of 2.5 to 5.0 m/s. A recording method and a reproduction method, using this optical recording medium, are proposed.

Optical recording medium and recording and reproducing method using the

A magneto-optical recording material is disclosed, which consists of magnetoplumbite type ferrite containing barium in which part of Ba is replaced by La and part of Fe is replaced by Co.

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Tokyo, Japan

Fumiya Ohmi