Development of the readout system for waveguide multilayer optical card

Waveguide multilayer optical card (WMOC) is a novel storage device of three-dimensional optical information. An advanced readout system fitting for the WMOC is introduced in this paper. The hardware mainly consists of the light source for reading, WMOC, motorized stages addressing unit, microscope imaging unit, CCD detecting unit and PC controlling & processing unit. The movement of the precision motorized stage is controlled by the computer through Visual Basic (VB) language in software. A control panel is also designed to get the layer address and the page address through which the position of the motorized stages can be changed. The WMOC readout system is easy to manage and the readout result is directly displayed on computer monitor. This work has been supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 60377006) and the Optical Science and Technology Program of Science and Technology Committee of Shanghai (Grant No. 036105033).