426 CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS / Vol. 6, No. 6 / June 10, 2008
Optical system and lens design for
Blu-ray disc optical pick-up
Lihua Li (
ooosss
uuu
), Longfa Pan (
999
{{{
), and Jianshe Ma (
êêê
ïïï
)
Optical Memory National Engineering Research Center, Department of Precision Instrument and Mechanology,
Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084
Received Septemb er 21, 2007
During the design process of Blu-ray disc optical pick-up (BD OPU), the optical system and the collimator
lens design is especially important. This paper d esigns an optical system and some lenses for the BD OPU,
including collimator lens, beam shaping lens for laser b eam shaping, and cylinder lens for signal detecting.
In this OPU , we use a triplet lens to collimate the laser beam. At th e same time, we build a series of
assembly jigs to make sure that each lens can be put into the OPU basement properly. At last, we get the
reading spot image and S-curve photo of OPU, which can be used to read Blu-ray disc (BD).
OCIS codes: 210.0210, 220.0220, 230.0230.
In the global market of the optical data storage, CD, CD-
ROM, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and so on are
widely used. Although compared with CD, current DVD
already has considerable progress in storage density and
read-write speed, the enhanced step is still restricted by
the red laser, which spurs the requirement of new gener-
ation of blu-ray technology. The new technology uses the
blue ray laser wave band to carry on the work, and the
storage capacity may increase nearly 5 times or more,
causing a technological breakthrough of high density of
optical data storage
[1−3]
. Table 1 introduces the format
for Blu-ray disc (BD) with single layer.
In this paper, according to the format for BD with
single layer, we build up a commercial optical system
for the Blu-ray disc optical pick-up (BD OPU) and the
ray-path with optical elements is shown in Fig. 1.
As the selected laser diode (LD) does not have the
feedback function, we need to build a special optical part
for LD power control. Therefore, BD OPU optical sys-
tem should be composed of the following three partial
optical ray paths: collimating, beam shaping and laser
power controlling. Table 2 gives the basic parameters of
Table 1. Format for BD with Single Layer
Capacity 23.3/25/27 GB (Single Layer)
Wavelength of the Laser 405 nm
NA of the Objective Lens 0.85
Data Transfer Rate 36 Mbps
Diameter of the Disc 120 mm
Thickness of th e Disc 1.2 mm
Diameter of the Center Hole 15 mm
Recording Method Phase Change
Signal Modulation 1 − 7PP
Data Track Groove Recording
Addressing Method Wobble
Visual Data MPEG-2 Video
Audio Data AC3, MPEG-1, Layer2, Others
AV Multiplex Method MPEG-2 Transport Stream
SONY LD whose grade is SLD3233VF-53
[4]
.
From Table 2, the parallel and perpendicular radia-
tion angles can be obtained. These decide the numerical
aperture (NA) of collimator lens.
In the collimation path of rays, we mainly designed the
triplet lens to avoid using asphere lens, because the cost
of asphere lens is much higher than triplet lens with the
same performance. In the asphere lens market, although
there are many types of ready-made products, special
lens for our LD is few and not suitable for this system.
Therefore we designed the collimator lens according to
the theoretically requirements for the LD radiation angle
and objective lens.
In BD OPU system, the basic requirement for objective
lens which is written in Blu-ray disc read-only format
[5]
is that NA should be 0.85. The first objective lens with a
NA of 0.8 was developed using a two-element lens to in-
crease the fabrication tolerance in 1997
[6]
. Then in order
to correct chromatic aberration caused by mode hopping
and wavelength change of the laser diode, a three-element
objective lens with NA of 0.85 at 405 nm was proposed
in 2002
[7]
. Almost at the same time, the first single
objective lens that has the NA of 0.85 was developed
in Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (JVC)
[8]
. Then
in 2003, JVC published the design principle for single
Fig. 1. Ray-path in BD OPU and optical components.
1671-7694/2008/060426-05
c
2008 Chinese Optics Letters