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One- and two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities in single crystal diamond

Nature Nanotechnology volume 7, pages 69–74 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Diamond is an attractive material for photonic quantum technologies because its colour centres have a number of outstanding properties, including bright single photon emission and long spin coherence times. To take advantage of these properties it is favourable to directly fabricate optical microcavities in high-quality diamond samples. Such microcavities could be used to control the photons emitted by the colour centres or to couple widely separated spins. Here, we present a method for the fabrication of one- and two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities with quality factors of up to 700 in single crystal diamond. Using a post-processing etching technique, we tune the cavity modes into resonance with the zero phonon line of an ensemble of silicon-vacancy colour centres, and we measure an intensity enhancement factor of 2.8. The controlled coupling of colour centres to photonic crystal microcavities could pave the way to larger-scale photonic quantum devices based on single crystal diamond.

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Figure 1: SEM images of two-dimensional and one-dimensional fabricated PhC cavities.
Figure 2: Photoluminescence spectra.
Figure 3: Cavity tuning.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge helpful discussions with D. Englund. The authors also thank J. Schmauch for SEM and TEM analysis, C. Zeitz for atomic force microscopy measurements, F. Soldera for assistance with FIB milling, T. Jung for fabrication tolerance analysis, K. Kretsch for assistance with wet chemical etching, S. Griesing for sputtering of metal layers, and S. Grandthyll for ellipsometry measurements. This work was financially supported by the BMBF (network EPHQAM, contract no. 01Bl0903).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universität des Saarlandes, Fachrichtung 7.2 (Experimentalphysik), Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany

    Janine Riedrich-Möller, Laura Kipfstuhl, Christian Hepp, Elke Neu & Christoph Becher

  2. Universität des Saarlandes, Fachrichtung 8.4 (Materialwissenschaft und Werkstofftechnik), Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany

    Christoph Pauly & Frank Mücklich

  3. Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK), University of Freiburg, Cleanroom Service Center, Freiburg, 79110, Germany

    Armin Baur & Michael Wandt

  4. TU Kaiserslautern, Nano + Bio Center, Kaiserslautern, 67653, Germany

    Sandra Wolff

  5. Universität Augsburg, Lehrstuhl für Experimentalphysik IV, Augsburg, 86159, Germany

    Martin Fischer, Stefan Gsell & Matthias Schreck

Authors
  1. Janine Riedrich-Möller
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Contributions

J.R-M. and L.K. fabricated the photonic crystals, performed the experiments and carried out the numerical modelling of the structures. M.F., S.G. and M.S. developed the CVD growth process for the diamond films on iridium buffer layers. A.B. and M.W. prepared the diamond membrane. J.R-M. and S.W. thinned the diamond film. C.P., J.R-M., L.K. and F.M. performed FIB milling. C.H. and E.N. contributed experimental tools and helped with the photoluminescence measurements and interpretation of data. C.B. conceived and designed the experiments. J.R-M. and C.B. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christoph Becher.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Riedrich-Möller, J., Kipfstuhl, L., Hepp, C. et al. One- and two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities in single crystal diamond. Nature Nanotech 7, 69–74 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2011.190

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