Solvated electrons are highly reductive chemical species whose chemical properties remain largely unknown. Diamond materials are proposed as a promising emitter of solvated electrons and visible light excitation would enable solar‐driven CO₂ or N₂ reductions reactions in aqueous medium. But sub‐bandgap excitation remains challenging. In this work, the role of surface states on diamond materials for charge separation and emission in both gaseous and aqueous environments from deep UV to visible light excitation is elucidated. Four different X‐ray and UV–vis spectroscopy methods are applied to diamond materials with different surface termination, doping and crystallinity. Surface states are found to dominate sub‐bandgap charge transfer. However, the surface charge separation is drastically reduced for boron‐doped diamond due to a very high density of bulk defects. In a gaseous atmosphere, the oxidized diamond surface maintains a negative electron affinity, allowing charge emission, due to remaining hydrogenated and hydroxylated groups. In an aqueous electrolyte, a photocurrent for illumination down to 3.5 eV is observed for boron‐doped nanostructured diamond, independent of the surface termination. This study opens new perspectives on photo‐induced interfacial charge transfer processes from metal‐free semiconductors such as diamonds.

A graphene-based electro-absorption modulator has been integrated into a passive polymer waveguide platform for the first time. The opto-electronic properties of the structure are investigated with numerical simulations and measurements of a fabricated device. The graphene layers transferred to the polymer substrate were analyzed by means of Raman spectroscopy and the results indicate a high crystalline quality of the two-dimensional material. The voltage-dependent transmission through a 25 µm long device has been measured in the telecommunications-relevant wavelength range between 1500 nm and 1600 nm yielding an extinction ratio of 0.056 dB/µm.

Vertical diamond Schottky diodes with blocking voltages VBD > 2.4 kV and ON-resistances RON < 400 mΩcm² were fabricated on homoepitaxially grown diamond layers with different surface morphologies. The morphology (smooth as-grown, hillock-rich, polished) influences the Schottky barrier, the carrier transport properties, and ultimately the device performance. The smooth as-grown sample exhibited a low reverse current density JRev < 10⁻⁴ A/cm² for reverse voltages up to 2.2 kV. The hillock-rich sample blocked similar voltages with a slight increase in the reverse current density (JRev < 10⁻³ A/cm²). The calculated 1-D breakdown field, however, was reduced by 30%, indicating a field enhancement induced by the inhomogeneous surface. The polished sample demonstrated a similar breakdown voltage and reverse current density as the smooth as-grown sample, suggesting that a polished surface can be suitable for device fabrication. However, statistical analysis of several diodes of each sample showed the importance of the substrate quality: a high density of defects both reduces the feasible device area and increases the reverse current density. In forward direction, the hillock-rich sample exhibited a secondary Schottky barrier, which could be fit with a modified thermionic emission (TEM) model employing the Lambert W-function. Both polished and smooth samples showed nearly ideal TEM with ideality factors 1.08 and 1.03, respectively. Compared with the literature, all three diodes exhibit an improved Baliga figure of merit for diamond Schottky diodes with VBD >2 kV.

Photonic devices and new functions based on HHI’s hybrid integration platform PolyBoard are presented providing lowloss thin-film-element-based light routing, an on-chip micro-optical bench and flexible chips comprising optical and electrical waveguides. The newly developed transfer and integration of graphene layers enables the fabrication of active optoelectronic devices in the intrinsically passive polymer waveguide networks with bandwidths in the GHz range. These novel functionalities in combination with the mature thermo-optic components of the PolyBoard platform such as tunable lasers, switches and variable attenuators pave the way towards new applications of photonic integrated circuits in communications and sensors

A microwave plasma reactor for diamond growth that allows for highly controllable process conditions is presented. The position of the diamond substrate within the reactor can be accurately controlled. Thus, equilibration of plasma conditions can be carried out after changes in process parameters. With this approach, sharp layer transitions among doped, undoped, and isotopically controlled diamond films can be obtained. In addition to the sample transfer, the growth temperature is maintained through a substrate heater, and a clean reactor environment is realized by a load‐lock sample exchange system. The plasma conditions are constantly monitored by optical emission spectroscopy. Using this system, the growth of nanoscopic sandwich structures is demonstrated with controlled isotopic ratios down to ≈10 nm thickness and N(V) layers below 50 nm are obtained on (001)‐oriented diamond. Growth rates and doping efficiencies depending on the used methane concentration are presented. Characterization with continuous‐wave optically detected magnetic resonance yields an average contrast of 4.1% per nitrogen vacancy (NV) orientation in layers with a thickness below 100 nm. Depending on the used methane concentration, surface morphology and NV doping homogeneity are influenced as observed by photoluminescence and atomic force microscopy measurements.

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre in diamond is a premier solid-state defect for quantum information processing and metrology. An integrated diamond quantum device harnesses the collective properties of multiple NV centres, enabling room-temperature quantum computing and sensing. While large-scale devices are poised to fill an important gap in the burgeoning quantum technology landscape, their practical realisation has not been achieved using current top-down fabrication techniques such as ion implantation. Consequently, this necessitates the development of a bottom-up fabrication technique, which is scalable, deterministic, and possesses atomic-scale precision. Informed by existing methods for fabricating phosphorous defect qubits in silicon, we envision a hydrogen depassivation lithography technique for atomically-precise manufacturing of nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond. This perspective article outlines a viable multi-step procedure for realising scalable fabrication of diamond quantum devices and identifies the key challenges in its development.