Imaging and Sensing Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation with Nanodiamonds containing Nitrogen-Vacancy Centers

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation with wavelengths ranging from 121 nm to 10 nm has been applied for photolithography to fabricate nanoelectronic devices. This study demonstrates that Fluorescent NanoDiamonds (FNDs) containing Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers as scintillators to image and characterize EUV radiations. The FNDs employed are ∼100 nm in size; they form a uniform and stable thin film (∼1 μm in thickness) on an indium−tin−oxide-coated slide by electrospray deposition. The film is non-hygroscopic and photostable and can emit bright red fluorescence from the neutral NV centers when excited by EUV light. An FND-based imaging device has been developed for beam diagnostics of 50 nm and 13.5 nm synchrotron radiations respectively, achieving a spatial resolution of 30 μm. The noise equivalent power density is 29 μW/(cm² Hz^1/2) for the 13.5 nm radiation. Our method can be extended to the imaging of Vacuum Ultraviolet radiation and soft X-ray.<br/><br/>Reference: T.-I. Yang, Y.-Y. Hui, J.-I. Lo, Y.-W. Huang, Y.-Y. Lee, B.-M. Cheng and H.-C. Chang, “Imaging extreme ultraviolet radiation using nanodiamonds with nitrogen-vacancy centers,” Nano Lett. 23(21), 9811–9816 (2023).