Charge state control by band engineering

Abstract

Abstract Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have unique optical and spin characteristics at room temperature, that is, (1) we can access and control the optical properties as well as the electron spin at single NV center, (2) we can manipulate the electron spin as the quantum-bit, and (3) the coherence time of the electron spin (more than milli-seconds at room temperature) is long enough for quantum operations. Therefore, NV centers are a promising candidate for various applications such as in quantum information science, high sensitivity sensors for magnetometry, bio-application, and so on. For these applications, controlling the charge state of NV centers is crucially important. The negatively charged NV− center is useful for the application related to the spin operation because optical initialization and readout of the spin state of the NV centers are possible in the NV− center. The neutral charged NV0 center can be applied to the single photon source for the quantum information devices, and so on. In this chapter, the approaches of the charge state control of the NV centers by the modulation of Fermi level using the band engineering are shown.