Patent ID: 7736715

Claim:
An optical recording medium comprising a substrate, a recording film formed on the substrate and configured to reversibly change an atomic arrangement, and an adjacent layer adjacent to the recording film, and configured to reversibly perform recording and/or erase on the recording film by using light, wherein the adjacent layer comprises at least one sublayer, wherein at least one sublayer of the adjacent layer comprises zirconium (Zr), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), and at least one of yttrium (Y) and niobium (Nb), wherein a composition of said at least one sublayer is represented by (ZrO 2-x N x ) 1-y ((Y 2 O 3 ) 1-z (Nb 2 O 5 ) z ) y , wherein 0<x≦0.5, 0<y≦0.1, and 0≦z≦1, and wherein a composition ratio x, y, z of the (ZrO 2-x N x ) 1-y ((Y 2 O 3 ) 1-z (Nb 2 O 5 ) z ) y is determined such that an extinction coefficient of the one sublayer is 1×10 −2 or less within a range of 250 nm≦λ≦1,000 nm provided that a wavelength of the light is represented by λ.