Description:
University of Oregon Researchers: Hailin Wang, Ignas Lekavicius
Patent Application: 17/466,979 filed on 9/3/2021 (UO-19-27)
Fabrication And Surface Treatment Of Suspended Diamond Two Dimensional Structures.
Technology Background/ Definition of Problem: A spin-mechanical resonator, in which an electron spin couples to a mechanical mode with a high Q-factor, provides an experimental platform for quantum control of both spin and mechanical degrees of freedom and for exploiting mechanical degrees of freedom for quantum information processing. Most of the experimental studies on spin-mechanical resonators have employed diamond based mechanical systems and have used negatively charged nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as a spin system. In many applications that use diamond substrates and NV centers, thin diamond layers are needed and surfaces at which NV center are defined should exhibit minimal surface damage. For very thin diamond layers, any non-uniformity produced during thinning can result in weak or broken diamond films. During some processing operations, substrate surfaces are damaged, resulting in excessive spectral linewidths of the NV centers. For at least these reasons, improved approaches are needed for the thinning process of diamond layers.
Our Technology Solution: University of Oregon researchers have created new methods of processing substrates, particularly diamond membranes and devices using such membranes. The disclosure generally pertains to thinning and etching of diamond substrates to achieve satisfactory thickness uniformity in thin substrates (less than 1um, 750nm, 500nm, 400nm, 300nm, 250nm, 200nm, 150nm, or 10 nm thick) and to process the thinned (backside surfaces) to improve linewidths of nitrogen vacancy centers or silicon vacancy centers implanted in the diamond substrates.
Applications: These new fabrication techniques are useful in any working of thin diamond substrate layers, and especially in the creation of diamond-based phononic quantum networks such as in UO-18-23 (US 11,113,622).