The development of optical data storage devices began in 1982 with the audio CD. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the audio CD, and Bayer was at the forefront of its development with the high-tech plastic Makrolon^®. Eleven years after the DVD was launched on the market in 1996, high-definition DVDs and Blu-ray discs – the latter having up to 50 gigabytes of storage space – have now been developed to market maturity. The storage capacities of high-definition DVDs and Blu-ray discs also make it possible to store an entire film in what is known as High Definition (HD) resolution on one disc and thus to conjure up pin-sharp images at the highest level of quality ever to be seen on a widescreen television in the home. Improvements in storage capacity have been made by continually reducing the size of the structures used to carry information on CDs – the so-called pits – by reducing the track pitch and the wavelengths of the laser beam, and by increasing the purity of the plastic even further.

However, the demand for storage space continues to increase and new systems such as holographic memories and near-field recording systems, which have storage capacities of over 100 gigabytes, are already being developed. And once again, materials produced by Bayer MaterialScience continue to be at the forefront of these developments.