Fabrication of thin diamond membranes by Ne+ implantation

• Published in: Giant (Oxford, England) Vol. 17; no. C; p. 100238
• Main Authors: Basso, Luca, Titze, Michael, Henshaw, Jacob, Kehayias, Pauli, Cong, Rong, Ziabari, Maziar Saleh, Lu, Tzu-Ming, Lilly, Michael P., Mounce, Andrew M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Elsevier Ltd 01-03-2024; Elsevier
• Subjects: Color centers; Diamond membranes; Quantum information science; Smart-cut; Quantum information science; Diamond membranes; Smart-cut; Color centers
• ISSN: 2666-5425; 2666-5425
• DOI: 10.1016/j.giant.2024.100238

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Color centers in diamond are one of the most promising tools for quantum information science. Of particular interest is the use of single-crystal diamond membranes with nanoscale-thickness as hosts for color centers. Indeed, such structures guarantee a better integration with a variety of other quantum materials or devices, which can aid the development of diamond-based quantum technologies, from nanophotonics to quantum sensing. A common approach for membrane production is what is known as “smart-cut”, a process where membranes are exfoliated from a diamond substrate after the creation of a thin sub-surface amorphous carbon layer by He+ implantation. Due to the high ion fluence required, this process can be time-consuming. In this work, we demonstrated the production of thin diamond membranes by neon implantation of diamond substrates. With the target of obtaining membranes of ∼200 nm thickness and finding the critical damage threshold, we implanted different diamonds with 300 keV Ne+ ions at different fluences. We characterized the structural properties of the implanted diamonds and the resulting membranes through SEM, Raman spectroscopy, and photoluminescence spectroscopy. We also found that a SRIM model based on a two-layer diamond/sp2-carbon target better describes ion implantation, allowing us to estimate the diamond critical damage threshold for Ne+ implantation. Compared to He+ smart-cut, the use of a heavier ion like Ne+ results in a ten-fold decrease in the ion fluence required to obtain diamond membranes and allows to obtain shallower smart-cuts, i.e. thinner membranes, at the same ion energy.