Nanofibers coated with Rare-Earth complexes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid platform using nanofibers coated with rare-earth complexes, combining the advantages of doped crystals and fibers for optical applications, with potential for quantum technologies.

Contribution

It presents a novel coating method on tapered silica fibers with monolayers of RE complexes, offering tailored environments and improved optical properties for quantum and photonic devices.

Findings

Retained optical transitions after coating

Achieved excited-state lifetime over 0.9 ms

Minimized inhomogeneity in RE ion environment

Abstract

Crystals and fibers doped with Rare Earth (RE) ions provide the basis to most of today's solid-state optical systems, from lasers and telecom devices to emerging potential quantum applications such as quantum memories and optical to microwave conversion. The two platforms, doped crystals and doped fibers, seem mutually exclusive, each having its own strengths and limitations- the former providing high homogeneity and coherence, and the latter offering the advantages of robust optical waveguides. Here we present a hybrid platform that does not rely on doping but rather on coating the waveguide - a tapered silica optical fiber - with a monolayer of complexes, each containing a single RE ion. The complexes offer an identical, tailored environment to each ion, thus minimizing inhomogeneity and allowing tuning of their properties to the desired application. Specifically, we use highly luminescent Yb$^{+3}$[Zn(II)$_{MC}$(QXA)] complexes, which isolate the RE ion from the environment and suppress non-radiative decay channels. We demonstrate that the beneficial optical transitions of the Yb$^{+3}$ are retained after deposition on the tapered fiber, and observe an excited-state lifetime of over 0.9 ms, on par with state-of-the-art Yb doped inorganic crystals.