Quantum Centers in Diamond

Diamond is a form of carbon that forms under high pressures. In addition to being admired for its beauty, it has long been used in industrial applications due to its hardness and thermal properties. At the turn of the century, it was noticed that diamond is also a good material for so-called quantum applications. Quantum mechanics describes how the physical world behaves at the scale of individual atoms and subatomic particles with many famous counter-intuitive predictions such as the wave particle duality and quantum superposition.

Although all macroscopic materials are based on interactions arising from quantum mechanics, harnessing quantum phenomena for practical applications has remained challenging due to the fragility of quantum states. Diamond provides one solution to this problem due to its robustness and low number of naturally occurring imperfections in its structure. This allows detecting and manipulating quantum states related to impurity atom imperfections, which has lead to applications for example in sensor technology, medical imaging and quantum computing.

QUEEN focuses on the study of the exact structure of such impurity-related imperfections and their manipulation through a combination of atomic-resolution transmission electron microscopy and various spectroscopic methods. Diamond structures will be further combined with the two-dimensional carbon material graphene for improved electronic properties. The results of the project will contribute to enabling new diamond-based quantum applications, as well as improving the performance of the already existing ones