Abstract
This thesis investigates the design and fabrication of integrated optics in diamond. Diamond is a particularly interesting material for photonics due to single photon emission from ‘colour centres’ that exist in diamond. We see diamond integrated optics as the best candidate for capturing and guiding these single photons.
Towards this goal the thesis presents a novel scalable fabrication process for patterning diamond with micron scale features and smooth sidewalls. This process is applied to the fabrication of optical waveguides in diamond. These waveguides are designed to be single moded with large mode field for coupling to optical fibre. To achieve this, the fabrication process is combined with other techniques necessary to confine light vertically as well as horizontally. Further advances on this process allow diamond structures to be patterned to the edge of a diamond crystal.
The second half of this thesis focuses particularly on the design and fabrication of slot-waveguides in diamond. Cavities formed from these waveguides hold interest for strong coupling with diamond colour centres, and low mode volume resonant cavities. The investigation of coupling between two dimensional arrays formed from these cavities shows their suitability for quantum information and simulation applications. The slot-waveguides that form these cavities have nanometre scale features and so require a different approach to lithographic patterning. The recently developed focussed ion beam hard mask method is applied and the fabricated diamond nanostructures are presented.