Imperial College London
Alternate

ProfessorNeilAlford

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Materials

Professor of Materials
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6724n.alford

 
 
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Assistant

 

Ms Karen Murphy +44 (0)20 7594 3330

 
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Location

 

2..05 (in RSM)Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Breeze:2018:10.1038/nature25970,
author = {Breeze, JD and Salvadori, E and Sathian, J and Alford, NM and Kay, CWM},
doi = {10.1038/nature25970},
journal = {Nature},
pages = {493--496},
title = {Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature25970},
volume = {555},
year = {2018}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - The maser—the microwave progenitor of the optical laser—has been confined to relative obscurity owing to its reliance on cryogenic refrigeration and high-vacuum systems. Despite this, it has found application in deep-space communications and radio astronomy owing to its unparalleled performance as a low-noise amplifier and oscillator. The recent demonstration of a room-temperature solid-state maser that utilizes polarized electron populations within the triplet states of photo-excited pentacene molecules in a p-terphenyl host1,2,3 paves the way for a new class of maser. However, p-terphenyl has poor thermal and mechanical properties, and the decay rates of the triplet sublevel of pentacene mean that only pulsed maser operation has been observed in this system. Alternative materials are therefore required to achieve continuous emission: inorganic materials that contain spin defects, such as diamond4,5,6 and silicon carbide7, have been proposed. Here we report a continuous-wave room-temperature maser oscillator using optically pumped nitrogen–vacancy defect centres in diamond. This demonstration highlights the potential of room-temperature solid-state masers for use in a new generation of microwave devices that could find application in medicine, security, sensing and quantum technologies.
AU  - Breeze,JD
AU  - Salvadori,E
AU  - Sathian,J
AU  - Alford,NM
AU  - Kay,CWM
DO  - 10.1038/nature25970
EP  - 496
PY  - 2018///
SN  - 0028-0836
SP  - 493
TI  - Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser
T2  - Nature
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature25970
UR  - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25970
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/58179
VL  - 555
ER  -
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