1. Bright near-surface silicon vacancy centers in diamond fabricated by femtosecond laser ablation
- Author
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Rong, Youying, Cheng, Ke, Ju, Zhiping, Pan, Chengda, Ma, Qiang, Liu, Shikang, Shen, Si, Wu, Botao, Jia, Tianqing, Wu, E, and Zeng, Heping
- Abstract
We report the generation of single negatively charged silicon vacancy (SiV^−) color centers by focusing a femtosecond (fs) laser on top of a high-purity diamond coated with a layer of Si nanoball. Under the interaction of a high-intensity fs laser, Si atoms were ionized and implanted into the diamond, accompanied with the creation of vacancies. After annealing at 850°C in vacuum for 1 h, the photoluminescence spectra of bright spots around the created crater presented a typical strong zero-phonon line at around 737 nm of SiV^− centers. Bright single SiV^− color centers could be observed with a maximum saturating counting rate of 300×10^3 counts/s. We explain the formation mechanism of SiV^− centers in diamond via a Coulomb explosion model. The results demonstrate that fs laser ablation can be utilized as a very promising tool to conveniently fabricate single bright SiV^− centers in diamond.
- Published
- 2019