Patent ID: 7755014

Claim:
An optical pickup device, comprising: a plurality of light sources that emit light beams having different wavelengths; a condensing element for condensing the light beam emitted from the light sources on a recording surface of an optical recording medium; and a diffraction element disposed between the light sources and the condensing element, the diffraction element including liquid crystal, two transparent electrodes for sandwiching the liquid crystal, and a liquid crystal control portion with electrodes connected to the transparent electrodes for controlling a voltage to be applied between the two transparent electrodes, at least one of the transparent electrodes being patterned to be capable of generating predetermined diffracted light by diffracting reflection light that is reflected by the recording surface of the optical recording medium, wherein the diffraction element is provided with a plurality of types of diffraction areas by forming different patterns on the transparent electrodes, each of the plurality of types of diffraction areas is formed so as to generate the predetermined diffracted light of only one of wavelengths of the light beams emitted from the light sources, and the patterned transparent electrodes for the types of diffraction areas are connected to different electrodes, respectively.