Room Temperature Continuous-Wave Inorganic Maser

室温连续波无机微波激射器

• 批准号: EP/S000798/1
• 负责人: Jonathan Breeze
• 金额: $ 85.96万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FS000798%2F1
• 关键词: Room; Temperature; Continuous; Wave; Inorganic

Until very recently the MASER could only be used in very specialist applications such as radio astronomy. The reason for this is that cryogenic cooling and to a lesser extent, high applied magnetic fields, prohibited mass production on the grounds of both complexity and cost. Despite the fact that the MASER was discovered before the LASER these issues meant that the latter, which does not need applied magnetic fields or cooling, saw widespread adoption in a huge range of applications from bar-code readers, laser discs to laser eye surgery.In 2013 Imperial and UCL were awarded an EPSRC funded research project to produce a room temperature MASER. Although we had preliminary observations that room temperature masing was possible we had not verified this in a different laboratory setting, nor did we have a clear idea of how the masing molecule interacted with light and which crystal orientations or dopant concentrations would be optimal. This collaboration was remarkably successful achieving all the objectives we set.Now, in what is another world first, the team has constructed a diamond MASER capable of continuous-wave operation at room temperature. Our previous research has concentrated solely on organic materials as the masing medium. In this proposal we will explore the potential of masing in inorganic materials at room temperature. In doing so we will obviate two key problems encountered with organics.Problem 1 - Decay rates: The primary obstacle that prevents continuous operation in organics is the relatively long lifetime of the lowest triplet sub-level, reducing the number of pentacenes available for optical pumping (bottleneck) and destroying the population inversion.Problem 2 - Heating: The organic gain medium, pentacene in p-terphenyl we first used to demonstrate a room temperature MASER cannot withstand a continuous illumination by a laser because the temperature of the terphenyl host rises above its melting point. Solution to both problems: a radical but exciting departure which will address both problems simultaneously is to explore high spin states in inorganic materials with high melting/decomposition temperature and favourable thermal conductivities (T.C.): such as diamond (M.P. 3550C; T.C. 2000 W/mK) and silicon carbide (2730C; T.C. 120 W/mK).Very recently we observed masing at room temperature in diamond exploiting NV centres. This means we can build upon a huge wealth of research in the UK and elsewhere on diamond NV centres. Again there is much research exploring defects in SiC that we can build on. We have initiated a collaboration with the group of Prof. Dr. Vladimir Dyakonov at Würzburg group who are currently exploring SiC. REF. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.00052.pdf Achieving this would further establish without doubt the UK as the key place to carry out fundamental research on the topic of room temperature MASERs.

直到最近，MASER 还只能用于非常专业的应用，例如射电天文学。其原因是低温冷却以及较小程度上的高应用磁场由于复杂性和成本而阻碍了大规模生产。尽管 MASER 是在 LASER 之前发现的，但这些问题意味着后者不需要施加磁场或冷却，在从条形码阅读器、激光光盘到激光眼科手术的广泛应用中得到了广泛采用。 2013 年，帝国理工学院和伦敦大学学院获得了 EPSRC 资助的一项研究项目，以生产室温 MASER。尽管我们初步观察到室温玛辛是可能的，但我们尚未在不同的实验室环境中验证这一点，也不清楚玛辛分子如何与光相互作用以及哪种晶体取向或掺杂剂浓度是最佳的。这次合作非常成功地实现了我们设定的所有目标。现在，该团队创造了另一个世界第一，构建了能够在室温下连续波运行的金刚石 MASER。我们之前的研究仅集中于有机材料作为基质介质。在本提案中，我们将探索室温下无机材料的潜力。这样做，我们将消除有机物遇到的两个关键问题。问题 1 - 衰变率：阻止有机物连续运行的主要障碍是最低三重态亚能级相对较长的寿命，减少了可用于光泵浦的并五苯数量（瓶颈）并破坏了粒子数反转。问题 2 - 加热：我们首先使用的有机增益介质，对三联苯中的并五苯 证明室温 MASER 无法承受激光的连续照射，因为三联苯主体的温度上升到其熔点以上。 解决这两个问题的方法：同时解决这两个问题的一个激进但令人兴奋的出发点是探索具有高熔化/分解温度和良好导热性（T.C.）的无机材料中的高自旋态：例如金刚石（M.P. 3550C; T.C. 2000 W/mK）和碳化硅（2730C; T.C. 120 W/mK）。最近我们在室温下观察到了Masing 钻石开采 NV 中心。这意味着我们可以在英国和其他地方关于钻石 NV 中心的大量研究成果的基础上继续发展。同样，有很多研究探索 SiC 的缺陷，我们可以以此为基础。我们已经开始与维尔茨堡小组的 Vladimir Dyakonov 教授、博士小组合作，他们目前正在探索 SiC。参考文献。 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.00052.pdf 实现这一目标无疑将进一步确立英国作为开展室温 MASER 主题基础研究的关键地点。

项目成果

Invasive optical pumping for room-temperature masers, time-resolved EPR, triplet-DNP, and quantum engines exploiting strong coupling.

• DOI: 10.1364/oe.401294
• 发表时间: 2020-09
• 期刊: Optics express
• 影响因子: 3.8
• 作者: Hao Wu;S. Mirkhanov;Wern Ng;K. Chen;Yuling Xiong;M. Oxborrow

Implicit and explicit host effects on excitons in pentacene derivatives

• DOI: 10.1063/1.5017285
• 发表时间: 2018-03-14
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS
• 影响因子: 4.4
• 作者: Charlton, R. J.;Fogarty, R. M.;Haynes, P. D.
• 通讯作者: Haynes, P. D.

Tunable Double Epsilon-Near-Zero Behavior in Niobium Oxynitride Thin Films

• DOI: 10.1016/j.apsusc.2021.150912
• 发表时间: 2021-08
• 期刊: Applied Surface Science
• 影响因子: 6.7
• 作者: Ryan Bower;M. P. Wells;F. Johnson;Rebecca Kilmurray;B. Doiron;E. Calì;G. Mallia;B. Zou;A. Mihai;N. Harrison;S. Fearn;R. Oulton;N. Alford;L. Cohen;P. Petrov

Unraveling the Room-Temperature Spin Dynamics of Photoexcited Pentacene in Its Lowest Triplet State at Zero Field

揭示零场最低三重态光激发并五苯的室温自旋动力学

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b08439
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
• 作者: Wu H

Exploring the spin dynamics of a room-temperature diamond maser using an extended rate equation model

使用扩展速率方程模型探索室温金刚石微波激射器的自旋动力学

• DOI: 10.1063/5.0164930
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Journal of Applied Physics
• 影响因子: 3.2
• 作者: Wen Y