Varying temperature and silicon content in nanodiamond growth: effects on silicon-vacancy centres

Sumin Choi,Leonid A Krivitsky,Dmitry A Kalashnikov,Valery A Davydov,Viatcheslav N Agafonov,Marcus W O Cheong,Victor Leong

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-21953-2

Sumin Choi, Leonid A Krivitsky + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-21953-2

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Abstract

Nanodidamonds containing colour centres open up many applications in quantum information processing, metrology, and quantum sensing. However, controlling the synthesis of nanodiamonds containing silicon vacancy (SiV) centres is still not well understood. Here we study nanodiamonds produced by a high-pressure high-temperature method without catalyst metals, focusing on two samples with clear SiV signatures. Different growth temperatures and relative content of silicon in the initial compound between the samples altered their nanodiamond size distributions and abundance of SiV centres. Our results show that nanodiamond growth can be controlled and optimised for different applications.

Highlights

Color centers in diamond have emerged as important quantum emitters for a broad range of applications including bioimaging [1,2,3], sensing [4, 5], and quantum nanophotonics [6, 7]
The lower growth temperature for sample A has led to smaller ND sizes compared to sample B
For sample A which is obtained from a mixture with low silicon content (Si/C ratio: 0.008), among NDs that show a silicon vacancy (SiV) spectral signature, we observe a 30% fraction (6 out of 20 candidates) of NDs that contain a single emitter

Summary

Introduction

Color centers in diamond have emerged as important quantum emitters for a broad range of applications including bioimaging [1,2,3], sensing [4, 5], and quantum nanophotonics [6, 7]. One important example is the silicon vacancy (SiV) center, which has been an active focus of research in recent years due to its attractive optical properties [8,9,10,11], including high brightness, narrow homogenous distribution, stable single photon emission with neartransform-limited linewidths, and minimal spectral diffusion. Nanodiamonds (NDs) containing color centers can be spatially manipulated and precisely positioned for enhanced coupling to other nanophotonics structures [13, 14] or to fibers [15, 16]. Fluorescent imaging probes require a high density of emitters for increased brightness and must be stable against photobleaching, while many quantum networking tasks require single emitters as true singlephoton sources

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