Direct to stamper/mother optical disk mastering

Abstract

A method and apparatus for creating an optical disk mother or stamper wherein the number of processing steps is greatly reduced from the prior art methods. In particular, the present invention involves directly forming a mother or stamper by direct laser ablation of a conductive metal substrate. More specifically, a stream of coded digital information (for example, representing the content of an encyclopedia in the case of CD ROM or a classical music collection in the case of CD audio) is converted into a corresponding plurality of pits and lands in the conductive metal substrate by electronically switching the beam of a first laser on and off via an electro or acusto-optic modulator (EOM/AOM) in response to the digital information. As a result, selective portions of the conductive substrate are either ablated (in the case where the laser is on) thereby directly creating the pits, or the substrate is left unaltered (in the case where the laser is off) thereby creating lands. These pits and lands correspond to the digital information and can be read to reproduce the same. The ablated substrate can then be used as a mother. Advantageously, no coating need first be applied to the surface of the substrate before ablation.