Property-Driven Analysis of Glasses for Data Storage via Femtosecond Laser Writing

The growing demand for high-density, long-term data storage has intensified interest in three-dimensional optical storage based on laser-written structures in glass. We evaluate a diverse set of commercial glasses to determine how intrinsic material properties influence the formation of multibit phase voxels. By analyzing voxel quality and write efficiency, we develop a materials-screening framework that links storage performance to measurable glass properties. Thermal diffusivity emerges as the property most strongly correlated with quality \((𝑟 = 0.78)\). The resulting performance landscape identifies a Pareto front in which Schott K10 exhibits the highest write efficiency (\(0.115\;{\rm bit}\,{\rm nJ}^{-1}\,{\rm voxel}^{-1}\)), while Borofloat 33 provides the highest quality (\(1.76\;{\rm bit}\,{\rm voxel}^{-1}\)). Overall, this work demonstrates a generalizable methodology for selecting glasses for advanced laser-processing applications, highlighting thermal diffusivity as a key factor for achieving precise photonic structuring.