Prof. Niels Quack
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)
BSAC Postdoc, 2014
January 23, 2018 | 12:00 to 01:00 | 540 Cory Hall
Host: Ming Wu
The extraordinary material properties of single crystal diamond provide great promise for numerous micro- and nanosystems: the wide spectral range of transparency from the UV into the far IR, in combination with high thermal conductivity, mechanical hardness, chemical resistance and biocompatibility make the case for outstanding photonic components, while the combination of high elasticity and crystalline structure promise high performance MEMS, such as high frequency resonators. The prospect to include optically active color centers provide a promising path for diamond photonic integrated circuits addressing novel applications in sensing and quantum information processing. However, reliable methods for large-scale thin film deposition of monocrystalline diamond remain elusive. Our group has thus recently developed several methods to sculpture micro- and nanostructures directly into high purity monocrystalline diamond substrates grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).
I will present an overview of our recent progress in fabrication of single crystal diamond micro- and nanostructures. We exploit an innovative anisotropic O2 plasma etching process, selectively revealing the characteristic <111> crystal planes, in order to fabricate V-groove diffraction gratings or beam splitters with well-defined splitting ratios, and we have developed a DRIE process to manufacture fully released micromechanical components. Finally, we combine reactive ion etching and multi-directional focused ion beam milling for the fabrication of freestanding optical disc resonators at the microscale. I will conclude with an outline of how our research activities contribute to the development of diamond photonic integrated circuits.
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