Nitrogen concentration control during diamond growth for NV ⁻ centre formation

Negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV ⁻ ) centres formed in diamond crystals are point defects that have potential applications in various quantum devices such as highly sensitive magnetic sensors. To improve the sensitivity of magnetic sensors using NV ⁻ centres, it is essential to precisely control the nitrogen concentration in the crystals. In this paper, we demonstrated that nitrogen concentration in diamond can be controlled with high precision for the following two representative growth methods. One is the high-pressure/high-temperature (HPHT) synthesis method and the other is the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) method. The nitrogen concentration of HPHT-grown diamond decreased semi-logarithmically with increasing contents of titanium or aluminium as nitrogen getter materials. The nitrogen concentration of CVD-grown diamond increased linearly with increasing the flow rate ratio of nitrogen to carbon. NV ⁻ centres were formed by controlling the total fluence of electron beams so that approximately 20% of the nitrogen became NV ⁻ centres. The coherence time of electron spin of NV ⁻ centres obtained by the Hahn-echo pulse sequence T ₂ of these diamond crystals was inversely proportional to the nitrogen concentration. A comparison of T ₂ of the NV ⁻ centres for HPHT-synthesized and CVD-grown diamonds showed no significant difference between them.

This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Diamond for quantum applications’.