Laser writing of individual nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond with near-unity yield

Abstract

Atomic defects in wide band gap materials show great promise for development of a new generation of quantum information technologies, but have been hampered by the inability to produce and engineer the defects in a controlled way. The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center in diamond is one of the foremost candidates, with single defects allowing optical addressing of electron spin and nuclear spin degrees of freedom with potential for applications in advanced sensing and computing. Here we demonstrate a method for the deterministic writing of individual NV centers at selected locations with high positioning accuracy using laser processing with online fluorescence feedback. This method provides a new tool for the fabrication of engineered materials and devices for quantum technologies and offers insight into the diffusion dynamics of point defects in solids. Main Text:The engineering of materials at the scale of individual atoms has long been viewed as a holy grail of technology. With the extreme miniaturization of modern semiconductor technology to sub-10 nm feature sizes and the emerging promise of quantum technologies that rely inherently on the principles of quantum physics, the ability to fabricate and manipulate atomic-scale systems is becoming increasingly important.One promising approach to quantum technologies is the use of 'color center' point defects in wide band gap materials that display strong optical transitions, allowing the addressing of single atoms using optical wavelengths within the transparency window of the solid. Fluorescence from single color centers displays quantum statistics with potential for use in communications, sensingWe would like to acknowledge DeBeers and Element Six for providing suitably characterized diamond samples for this work, and in particular Daniel Twitchen and David Fisher for their comments on the manuscript. Data reported in the paper are presented in the Supplementary Materials and are archived at (tbc). The work was funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the UK hub in Networked Quantum Information Technologies (NQIT), grant # EP/M013243/1. Y-CC, B Griffiths and SN carried out the experiments and performed the data analysis with supervision from JS and PS; B Griffiths, LW, SJ and PS constructed the laser writing and fluorescence feedback apparatus; SI, YL, CJS and BLG carried out the Hahn echo and spatial localization measurements under the supervision of GM and MN; and JS, YCC, PS and MB conceived the experiment; all authors contributed to writing the manuscript. Supplementary Materials: Materials and Methods:The samples used were single-crystal type 1b diamond with nitrogen concentration of 1.8 ppm, produced by a High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) technique. The diamond was cut and polished with flat surfaces parallel to the (110) plane of the cubic crystal.The optical layout for the combined laser processing and fluorescence feedback apparatus is shown in Figure S1. The laser processing was performed using a regenerat...

Quantum Micro–Nano Devices Fabricated in Diamond by Femtosecond Laser and Ion Irradiation

“…More recently, the Salter group demonstrated 3D arrays of single NV centers with coherence times exceeding 500 µs, and the generation of single NV centers with near unity yield through laser induced local annealing and online monitoring of the NV center fluorescence . Such long coherence times suggest that minimal local damage associated with paramagnetic vacancy complexes is produced during the laser fabrication of NVs.…”

Laser Writing of Scalable Single Color Centers in Silicon Carbide

“…The yield of optically stable single VSi centres is up to 30%. In diamond, some form of annealing is always required to generate NVcentres [20][21][22]. On the contrary, single VSi centres in SiC can be created with just a single pulse and no annealing.…”

Efficient generation of nitrogen vacancy centers by laser writing close to the diamond surface with a layer of silicon nanoballs

“…By these methods, highly pure or precisely positioned NV − centers could be obtained. In recent years, femtosecond laser technique is exploited as a newly promising tool to conveniently produce single emitters in diamond [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. The femtosecond laser is used to write vacancies through high-speed electron beam in air filament resulted by highintensity laser pulses [16] or multi-photon ionization [17,18].…”

“…The femtosecond laser is used to write vacancies through high-speed electron beam in air filament resulted by highintensity laser pulses [16] or multi-photon ionization [17,18]. Vacancies move to native nitrogen impurities in diamond under thermal annealing [16,18,[20][21][22] or driving of laser pulses [17,19] to form single or ensemble NV − centers. Especially, combined with aberration correction, femtosecond laser could write high-quality NV − centers effectively at desire positions [18][19][20].…”