News Release：Pioneer To Introduce High Precision Electron Beam Recorder

April 2, 2004, Tokyo, Japan - Pioneer Corporation and its subsidiary, Pioneer FA Corporation, announced today that they have jointly developed a high-precision electron beam recorder (EBR) by utilizing their fine-processing technology and equipment technology, which will make it easier to manufacture master discs for next-generation optical discs such as Blu-ray Discs. Pioneer FA will start selling the new high-precision EBR in early April, 2004.

In the conventional optical-disc mastering process, many disc manufacturers have been using laser beam recorders (LBR), which utilize ultraviolet (UV) lasers or deep-ultraviolet (Deep-UV) lasers as light source. Pioneer's high-precision EBR employs an electron beam as a recording beam to sharply narrow the beam diameter, which can realize even finer pattern processing in the mastering process, compared with LBRs.

The high-precision EBR also achieves high levels of record-positioning accuracy, thanks to the high-precision recording position control technology, which the Pioneer group developed when it started with production of Laser Discs. Pioneer's EBR can manufacture master discs for high-density optical discs including Blu-ray discs, as well as Discrete Track Media and Patterned Media - higher-density hard disks regarded as highly promising future technologies.

Since Pioneer's Corporate R&D Laboratories began basic research on a high-precision EBR in 1993, its results have been presented at academic conferences and study groups. In the meantime, Pioneer's high-precision EBR technology has been highly evaluated as a key technology indispensable for the development of next-generation discs. In addition to that, the demand for such technology has been growing. Accordingly, Pioneer has decided to launch this high-precision EBR.

Pioneer FA expects that the market will expand and plans on promoting the development of next generation EBRs to realize even higher-density recording together with Pioneer.

Main features

1. Stable electron beam emission with a large current by utilizing a thermal/field type emitter.
2. Large, high-density recording capacity of 50GB or more on one side of a φ 12 cm disc.
3. High track-pitch accuracy.
4. High productivity with a load-lock chamber

‹‹ Pit Pattern samples by an LBR and EBR ››

LBR	EBR
Capacity: 4.7GB Track pitch: 0.74µm Min. pit length: 0.40µm	Capacity: 50GB Track pitch: 0.23µm Min. pit length: 0.12µm

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