2011/12/24 by A. M. Edmonds, U. F. S. D'Haenens-Johansson, M. E. Newton +5 · 2 citations
Chemistry · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical vapor deposition #Chemistry #Crystallography #Diamond #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Magnetic field #Magnetometer #Materials science #Metal and Thin Film Mechanics #Nitrogen #Optoelectronics #Physics #Vacancy defect #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.86.035201
13 Pages (inlcuding suplementary information), 4 figures
arxiv created 2011/12/24 · arxiv updated 2013/05/29
The negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV^\ensuremath-) center in diamond is an attractive candidate for applications that range from magnetometry to quantum information processing. Here we show that only a fraction of the nitrogen (typically <0.5%) incorporated during homoepitaxial diamond growth by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is in the form of undecorated NV^\ensuremath- centers. Furthermore, studies on CVD diamond grown on (110)-oriented substrates show a near 100% preferential orientation of NV centers along only the [111] and [111] directions, rather than the four possible orientations. The results indicate that NV centers grow in as units, as the diamond is deposited, rather than by migration and association of their components. The NV unit of the NVH^\ensuremath- is similarly preferentially oriented, but it is not possible to determine whether this defect was formed by H capture at a preferentially aligned NV center or as a complete unit. Reducing the number of NV orientations from four orientations to two orientations should lead to increased optically detected magnetic resonance contrast and thus improved magnetic sensitivity in ensemble-based magnetometry.