Embedding nanodiamonds in polymer can advance quantum computing and organic research

A nitrogen-vacancy (NV) heart is a defect within the crystal construction of diamond, the place a nitrogen atom replaces a carbon atom within the diamond lattice and a neighboring web site within the lattice is vacant. This and different fluorescent defects in diamond, generally known as colour facilities, have attracted researchers’ consideration owing to their quantum properties, similar to single-photon emission at room temperature and with lengthy coherence time. Their many purposes embrace quantum info encoding and processing, and cell marking in organic research.

Microfabrication in diamond is technically troublesome, and nanodiamonds with colour facilities have been embedded in custom-designed constructions as a means of integrating these quantum emitters into photonic gadgets. A research performed on the College of São Paulo’s São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC-USP) in Brazil has established a technique for this, as described in an article revealed within the journal Nanomaterials.

“We demonstrated a technique of embedding fluorescent nanodiamonds in microstructures designed for this goal, utilizing two-photon polymerization [2PP],” Cleber Mendonça, a professor at IFSC-USP and final creator of the article, informed Agência FAPESP. “We studied the perfect focus of nanodiamond within the photoresist to attain constructions with at the least one fluorescent NV heart and good structural and optical high quality.” The photoresist is a light-sensitive materials used within the fabrication course of to switch nanoscale patterns to the substrate.

Mendonça and his group have made intensive use of 2PP to manufacture three-dimensional microstructures. Merely put, 2PP is a direct laser writing method wherein a high-intensity laser beam is targeted on a light-sensitive polymer resin that has not but solidified to supply the microstructure of curiosity.

Within the research, a nanodiamond answer in deionized water was added to the combination of monomers that comprised the photoresist, and after all of the requisite physicochemical procedures had been accomplished, microfabrication was carried out by submitting the pattern to pulses from a robust titanium-sapphire laser managed by devoted software program to outline the precise coordinates of the beam.

“Fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy measurements have been used to verify the presence and site of the nanodiamonds, whereas absorbance measurements assessed scattering losses at larger concentrations. Our outcomes present the feasibility of fabricating microstructures embedded inside fluorescent nanodiamonds by way of 2PP for photonics and quantum know-how purposes,” the authors write within the article.

The research was a part of the Ph.D. analysis of first creator Filipe Assis Couto, with Mendonça as thesis advisor.