World’s first room temperature maser using diamond developed

The world's first continuous room-temperature solid-state maser has been developed by UCL and Imperial College London scientists. The breakthrough, made using a diamond held in a ring of sapphire, opens up the possibility for masers (microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) being used in a wide variety of applications such as medical imaging and airport security scanning. Masers are the older, microwave version of lasers and have traditionally been used in deep space communication and radio astronomy. They were invented in 1954 but their use has been limited because, until now, they must be cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero (-273°C) to function. Professor Chris Kay (London Centre for Nanotechnology at UCL) said: "This is a huge development and really opens up what we can use masers for in the future. I think they could play a pivotal role in improving communications on earth and in space, increasing the sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging and even contribute to the realisation of quantum computers." In 2012, the team demonstrated that a maser could operate at room temperature using the organic molecule pentacene. However, it only produced short bursts of maser radiation that lasted less than one thousandth of a second.