Mask-less lithography of diamond films using shaped ultrafast UV pulses

Atomic-scale manipulation of carbon based surfaces, such as diamond, has an enormous potential for the construction of future nano-scale, photonic and optoelectronic devices. Diamond, when compared to other group IV covalent semiconductors, is particularly interesting; not only its tightly packed and strongly bound crystal lattice is an ideal environment for extreme physics, but it also offers advantages in terms of heat conductivity, hardness and transparency for multitude of applications. The development of diamond transistors [1], single photon sources for quantum computation based on diamond [2] or high power diamond optics and lasers [3] have benefited from developments on high precision diamond processing greatly.