RESUMO
Nanostructured diamonds hosting optically active paramagnetic color centers (NV, SiV, GeV, etc.) and hyperfine-coupled with them quantum memory 13C nuclear spins situated in diamond lattice are currently of great interest to implement emerging quantum technologies (quantum information processing, quantum sensing and metrology). Current methods of creation such as electronic-nuclear spin systems are inherently probabilistic with respect to mutual location of color center electronic spin and 13C nuclear spins. A new bottom-up approach to fabricate such systems is to synthesize first chemically appropriate diamond-like organic molecules containing desired isotopic constituents in definite positions and then use them as a seed for diamond growth to produce macroscopic diamonds, subsequently creating vacancy-related color centers in them. In particular, diamonds incorporating coupled NV-13C spin systems (quantum registers) with specific mutual arrangements of NV and 13C can be obtained from anisotopic azaadamantane molecule. Here we predict the characteristics of hyperfine interactions (hfi) for the NV-13C systems in diamonds grown from various isotopically substituted azaadamantane molecules differing in 13C position in the seed, as well as the orientation of the NV center in the post-obtained diamond. We used the spatial and hfi data simulated earlier for the H-terminated cluster C510[NV]-H252. The data obtained can be used to identify (and correlate with the seed used) the specific NV-13C spin system by measuring, e.g., the hfi-induced splitting of the mS = ±1 sublevels of the NV center in optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) spectra being characteristic for various NV-13C systems.
RESUMO
Black silicon (bSi) refers to an etched silicon surface comprising arrays of microcones that effectively suppress reflection from UV to near-infrared (NIR) while simultaneously enhancing the scattering and absorption of light. This makes bSi covered with a nm-thin layer of plasmonic metal, i.e., gold, an attractive substrate material for sensing of bio-macromolecules and living cells using surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The performed Raman measurements accompanied with finite element numerical simulation and density functional theory analysis revealed that at the 785 nm excitation wavelength, the SERS enhancement factor of the bSi/Au substrate is as high as 108 due to a combination of electromagnetic and chemical mechanisms. This finding makes the SERS-active bSi/Au substrate suitable for detecting trace amounts of organic molecules. We demonstrate the outstanding performance of this substrate by highly sensitive and specific detection of a small organic molecule of 4-mercaptobenzoic acid and living C6 rat glioma cell nucleic acids/proteins/lipids. Specifically, the bSi/Au SERS-active substrate offers a unique opportunity to investigate the living cells' malignant transformation using characteristic protein disulfide Raman bands as a marker. Our findings evidence that bSi/Au provides a pathway to the highly sensitive and selective, scalable, and low-cost substrate for lab-on-a-chip SERS biosensors that can be integrated into silicon-based photonics devices.