TY - JOUR
T1 - Room-Temperature Photochromism of Silicon Vacancy Centers in CVD Diamond
AU - Wood, Alexander
AU - Lozovoi, Artur
AU - Zhang, Zi Huai
AU - Sharma, Sachin
AU - López-Morales, Gabriel I.
AU - Jayakumar, Harishankar
AU - de Leon, Nathalie P.
AU - Meriles, Carlos A.
N1 - Funding Information:
All authors acknowledge support by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, National Quantum Information Science Research Centers, Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA) under Contract DE-SC0012704. A.W., A.L., S.S., H.J., and C.A.M. acknowledge access to the facilities and research infrastructure of NSF CREST-IDEALS, Grant NSF-HRD-1547830. A.W. was additionally supported by the Australian Research Council (Grant ID DE210101093).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2023/2/8
Y1 - 2023/2/8
N2 - The silicon vacancy (SiV) center in diamond is typically found in three stable charge states, SiV0, SiV-, and SiV2-, but studying the processes leading to their formation is challenging, especially at room temperature, due to their starkly different photoluminescence rates. Here, we use confocal fluorescence microscopy to activate and probe charge interconversion between all three charge states under ambient conditions. In particular, we witness the formation of SiV0 via the two-step capture of diffusing, photogenerated holes, a process we expose both through direct SiV0 fluorescence measurements at low temperatures and confocal microscopy observations in the presence of externally applied electric fields. In addition, we show that continuous red illumination induces the converse process, first transforming SiV0 into SiV- and then into SiV2-. Our results shed light on the charge dynamics of SiV and promise opportunities for nanoscale sensing and quantum information processing.
AB - The silicon vacancy (SiV) center in diamond is typically found in three stable charge states, SiV0, SiV-, and SiV2-, but studying the processes leading to their formation is challenging, especially at room temperature, due to their starkly different photoluminescence rates. Here, we use confocal fluorescence microscopy to activate and probe charge interconversion between all three charge states under ambient conditions. In particular, we witness the formation of SiV0 via the two-step capture of diffusing, photogenerated holes, a process we expose both through direct SiV0 fluorescence measurements at low temperatures and confocal microscopy observations in the presence of externally applied electric fields. In addition, we show that continuous red illumination induces the converse process, first transforming SiV0 into SiV- and then into SiV2-. Our results shed light on the charge dynamics of SiV and promise opportunities for nanoscale sensing and quantum information processing.
KW - charge dynamics
KW - color center photochromism
KW - diamond
KW - silicon vacancy centers
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U2 - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04514
DO - 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04514
M3 - Article
C2 - 36668997
AN - SCOPUS:85146908694
SN - 1530-6984
VL - 23
SP - 1017
EP - 1022
JO - Nano Letters
JF - Nano Letters
IS - 3
ER -