A route to erbium-doped nanocrystals as a single photon source using double nanohole optical tweezers
| dc.contributor.author | Dobinson, Michael | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Gordon, Reuven | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2022-04-28T22:33:53Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2022-04-28T22:33:53Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2022 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2022-04-28 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Applied Science M.A.Sc. | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | This thesis presents a route towards a single photon source based on erbium-doped nanocrystals, fabricated with methods that use double nanohole optical tweezers. Single photon sources are an exciting quantum technology and erbium is good candidate as it emits in the low-loss fiber optic C-band, but it is a weak emitter. Double nanohole apertures can be designed with plasmonic resonances to enhance the local electric field. In this thesis, double nanohole optical tweezers are used to isolate and enhance the emission of erbium-doped nanocrystals, with the tuned geometry showing a factor of 50 additional enhancement over rectangular apertures. With the enhanced emission, nanocrystals with discrete levels of erbium emitters are detected and isolated in real-time, based on their level of emission. This real-time process demonstrates a major improvement over typical post-processing approaches. A novel method to anchor nanocrystals in a double nanohole using a photochemical thiol reaction was investigated which yielded 40% of nanoparticles anchoring within 2 μm of the DNH, with 5% inside. This is useful as otherwise the trapping laser must be maintained to keep the nanocrystal in the trap. Another challenge is coupling to an optical fiber, for which a method to combine trapping and coupling was explored. Colloidal pattern transfer is presented as a low-cost fabrication method for nanoaperture optical fiber tweezers, with fiber-based trapping demonstrated using 40 nm polystyrene nanospheres and hexagonal boron nitride. The preliminary results from these methods show great potential, and with further refinement they may lead towards a method to fabricate a low-cost fiber-coupled single photon source based on erbium-doped nanocrystals. | en_US |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | en_US |
| dc.identifier.bibliographicCitation | Z. Sharifi, M. Dobinson, G. Hajisalem, M. S. Shariatdoust, A. L. Frencken, F. C. J. M. van Veggel, and R. Gordon, “Isolating and enhancing single-photon emitters for 1550 nm quantum light sources using double nanohole optical tweezers,” The Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 154, no. 18, p. 184204, May 2021. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/13900 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en_US |
| dc.subject | optical trapping | en_US |
| dc.subject | nanoaperture | en_US |
| dc.subject | single emitter | en_US |
| dc.title | A route to erbium-doped nanocrystals as a single photon source using double nanohole optical tweezers | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |