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      Reliable Nanofabrication of Single-Crystal Diamond Photonic Nanostructures for Nanoscale Sensing

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          Abstract

          In this manuscript, we outline a reliable procedure to manufacture photonic nanostructures from single-crystal diamond (SCD). Photonic nanostructures, in our case SCD nanopillars on thin (<1 μ m) platforms, are highly relevant for nanoscale sensing. The presented top-down procedure includes electron beam lithography (EBL) as well as reactive ion etching (RIE). Our method introduces a novel type of inter-layer, namely silicon, that significantly enhances the adhesion of hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) electron beam resist to SCD and avoids sample charging during EBL. In contrast to previously used adhesion layers, our silicon layer can be removed using a highly-selective RIE step, which is not damaging HSQ mask structures. We thus refine published nanofabrication processes to ease a higher process reliability especially in the light of the advancing commercialization of SCD sensor devices.

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          Most cited references27

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          Scanning Confocal Optical Microscopy and Magnetic Resonance on Single Defect Centers

          A. Gruber (1997)
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            Stable Solid-State Source of Single Photons

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              A robust scanning diamond sensor for nanoscale imaging with single nitrogen-vacancy centres

              The nitrogen-vacancy defect centre in diamond has potential applications in nanoscale electric and magnetic-field sensing, single-photon microscopy, quantum information processing and bioimaging. These applications rely on the ability to position a single nitrogen-vacancy centre within a few nanometres of a sample, and then scan it across the sample surface, while preserving the centre's spin coherence and readout fidelity. However, existing scanning techniques, which use a single diamond nanocrystal grafted onto the tip of a scanning probe microscope, suffer from short spin coherence times due to poor crystal quality, and from inefficient far-field collection of the fluorescence from the nitrogen-vacancy centre. Here, we demonstrate a robust method for scanning a single nitrogen-vacancy centre within tens of nanometres from a sample surface that addresses both of these concerns. This is achieved by positioning a single nitrogen-vacancy centre at the end of a high-purity diamond nanopillar, which we use as the tip of an atomic force microscope. Our approach ensures long nitrogen-vacancy spin coherence times (∼75 µs), enhanced nitrogen-vacancy collection efficiencies due to waveguiding, and mechanical robustness of the device (several weeks of scanning time). We are able to image magnetic domains with widths of 25 nm, and demonstrate a magnetic field sensitivity of 56 nT Hz(-1/2) at a frequency of 33 kHz, which is unprecedented for scanning nitrogen-vacancy centres.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Micromachines (Basel)
                Micromachines (Basel)
                micromachines
                Micromachines
                MDPI
                2072-666X
                24 October 2019
                November 2019
                : 10
                : 11
                : 718
                Affiliations
                Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technology, Saarland University, Physics, Campus E2.6, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
                Author notes
                [†]

                Current address: Department of Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry, Ghent University Krijgslaan 281, building S4, 9000 Gent, Belgium.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4024-6390
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7800-515X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6986-1277
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1904-3206
                Article
                micromachines-10-00718
                10.3390/mi10110718
                6915366
                31653033
                6fb4d887-e0e3-480e-9f50-dec58bb7761e
                © 2019 by the authors.

                Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 26 September 2019
                : 17 October 2019
                Categories
                Article

                top-down nanofabrication,single-crystal diamond,hsq,electron beam lithography,inductively coupled-reactive ion etching (icp-rie)

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