Tailoring of nitrogen-vacancy colour centers in diamond epilayers by in situ sulfur and nitrogen anion engineering
- 19 November 2019
- journal article
- research article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
- Vol. 53 (7), 075107
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/ab5908
Abstract
In this work, a sulfur and nitrogen co-doping technique has been demonstrated for the diamond epilayer growth by microwave plasma chemical vapor deposition (MPCVD). Results show that the nitrogen concentration in films could be tailored by co-doping of sulfur. At a certain growth condition, single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) colour centers could be achieved. A competition mechanism between sulfur and nitrogen incorporation in the H2/CH4 plasma is proposed to explain the efficient suppression of the incorporated nitrogen. Briefly, adding H2S decreases the growth rate and the resulting (S or S2) species could react with the dissociated nitrogen atoms to form S and N-containing clusters. Hence, the concentration of the NV centers in diamond is decreased. Meanwhile, density functional theory (DFT) calculations indicate an increment of the nitrogen-vacancy formation energy in the presence of sulfur, which confirms that sulfur has a suppression effect on the formation of the NV centers. This study provides a new method to adjust the concentration of the NV centers in the diamond films.Funding Information
- The National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB0406502, 2017YFF0201800, 2017YFB0403003)
- The National Natural Science Foundation of China (61774081, 61504057, 61775203, 61574075, 61674077, 91850112)
- the State Key R&D project of Jiangsu (BE2018115)
- Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (KYCX19_0044)
This publication has 40 references indexed in Scilit:
- High-performance diamond-based single-photon sources for quantum communicationPhysical Review A, 2009
- Chemical vapour deposition synthetic diamond: materials, technology and applicationsJournal of Physics: Condensed Matter, 2009
- Enhanced optical properties of chemical vapor deposited single crystal diamond by low-pressure/high-temperature annealingProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Low temperature diamond growth using CO2/CH4 plasmas: Molecular beam mass spectrometry and computer simulation investigationsJournal of Applied Physics, 2001
- From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave methodPhysical Review B, 1999
- Scanning Confocal Optical Microscopy and Magnetic Resonance on Single Defect CentersScience, 1997
- Efficient iterative schemes forab initiototal-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis setPhysical Review B, 1996
- Growth on the reconstructed diamond (100) surfaceThe Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1993
- Vacancy-related centers in diamondPhysical Review B, 1992
- Inhomogeneous Electron GasPhysical Review B, 1964