Demonstration of diamond microlens structures by a three-dimensional (3D) dual-mask method.

Diamond is a promising platform for quantum information technologies (QITs) mainly due to the properties of color centers including spin read-out, magnetic field sensing, and entanglement between different nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. High photon collection efficiency is essential for a high fidelity optical single-shot readout of electronic spin in the color center. To avoid total internal reflection, sculpting solid immersion lenses in the diamond surface is an ideal natural choice. Three-dimensional (3D) microstructures can be made in a photoresist material by a special lithography method. These structures can be subsequently transferred into silicon, diamond or other semiconductors by plasma etching with appropriate selectivity. However, this method cannot be directly implemented into making large height diamond microlenses where the selectivity between diamond and the photoresist is very low. In this work, we propose and demonstrate a dual mask method to achieve an overall high selectivity between diamond and photoresist via the interlayer of single crystalline silicon. By tuning the process parameters of the two etching steps, diamond micro-lenses with large variable height are successfully demonstrated..