Abstract
In the last two decades, the use of diamond as a material for applications in nanophotonics, optomechanics, quantum information, and sensors tremendously increased due to its outstanding mechanical properties, wide optical transparency, and biocompatibility. This has been possible owing to advances in methods for growth of high-quality single crystal diamond (SCD), nanofabrication methods and controlled incorporation of optically active point defects (e.g., nitrogen vacancy centers) in SCD. This paper reviews the recent advances in SCD nano-structuring methods for realization of micro- and nano-structures. Novel fabrication methods are discussed and the different nano-structures realized for a wide range of applications are summarized. Moreover, the methods for color center incorporation in SCD and surface treatment methods to enhance their properties are described. Challenges in the upscaling of SCD nano-structure fabrication, their commercial applications and future prospects are discussed.
Highlights
Diamond is an outstanding material for micro/nanofabrication of optomechanical, photonic and sensor components owing to its exceptional mechanical properties, broad optical transparency combined with biocompatibility in both bulk and nano-structures
Active point defects called color centers in diamond have proven useful for a wide range of applications which span from sensing magnetic fields e.g., in nano magnetic resonance, single molecule detection and single photon emission to optomechanics, etc. [3,4,5]
Metalenses are a comparably recent approach to collimate the emission from individual color centers: a metasurface composed of diamond nanopillars arranged in a regular pattern acts as an immersion lens and allows efficient coupling of color center emission to optical fibers
Summary
Diamond is an outstanding material for micro/nanofabrication of optomechanical, photonic and sensor components owing to its exceptional mechanical properties, broad optical transparency combined with biocompatibility in both bulk and nano-structures. Micromachines 2021, 12, 36 spin coherence times and realize diamond structures for efficient light extraction Realizing such structures, often embedding single NV centers, requires growth and nanofabrication of high quality SCD. Top-down approaches allow to create nano-structures with well-defined characteristics (shape, defect density) with high precision, but, require advanced nanofabrication and plasma etching which enhances processing costs [4,12]. Complementary to the previous reviews by Schroeder et al [13] and Aharonovich et al [14], which reported mainly the fabrication of diamond photonic devices, we describe the different micro/nano-structures that were realized and are suitable for applications in quantum photonics, sensing, mechanics, optomechanics, etc. Nano-structures realized through such approaches are suitable for applications in quantum information processing, magnetometry, microscopy, nano magnetic resonance imaging, etc. [1,2,5]
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