Abstract
In focus of this report are the mechanisms of formation, propagation, and interaction of growth defects in heteroepitaxial diamond films along with their impact on the optical emission properties of N- and Si-vacancy (NV and SiV) color centers. Here, we analyze and discuss the properties of incoherent grain boundaries (IGBs) and extended defects in a nitrogen- and boron-doped heterodiamond nucleated and grown on Ir(001) via bias-enhanced nucleation and chemical vapor deposition techniques. We show that the low-angle IGBs alter the structural and optical emission properties of NV and SiV complexes by subduing NV emission and supporting the formation of interstitial Si-vacancy complexes dominating in the faulted IGB regions. We also demonstrate that the IGB-confined threading dislocations are responsible for the vertical transport and incorporation of Si impurities in thick layers, leading to an enhanced SiV emission from the IGBs.
Highlights
The growing interest in devices directly employing quantum effects for operation at ambient temperatures greatly intensifies applied research toward synthetic diamond.1 In particular, diamond epilayers hosting optically active complexes of an impurity atom (i.e., N, Si, Ni, Cr, etc.) and adjacent carbon lattice vacancies have attracted the greatest attention in recent studies
The evolution of chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-diamond technologies from a homoepitaxy on the small-area highpressure and high-temperature (HPHT) substrates to a wafer-scale bias-enhanced nucleation (BEN)-assisted heteroepitaxy is an important step toward practical applications and large-scale device manufacturing based on conventional methods of microelectronics
A radical reduction of the growth defect densities in heteroepitaxial films down to 102–104 cm−2 remains the first priority task—providing feasible solutions will ensure that the CVD diamond plays a role in the development of emerging power electronic, integrated optic, and quantum devices
Summary
The growing interest in devices directly employing quantum effects for operation at ambient temperatures greatly intensifies applied research toward synthetic diamond. In particular, diamond epilayers hosting optically active complexes of an impurity atom (i.e., N, Si, Ni, Cr, etc.) and adjacent carbon lattice vacancies have attracted the greatest attention in recent studies. Being incorporated into the diamond lattice by implantation or by in situ doping, such impurity-vacancy configurations show spin and optical properties suitable for quantum state manipulation and detection at room temperature, which should lead to quantum devices with fundamentally superior performances and capabilities for sensing, imaging, communicating, and computing.. While the first condition is mostly defined by the purity of a growth environment and the quality of precursors, the latter two parameters relate to the density of growth defects in diamond films. They strongly depend on the growth technique and the crystallization conditions including substrate material, nucleation technique, surface pretreatment along with growth chemistry and thermodynamics
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