V. Mille

Perfect preferential orientation of nitrogen-vacancy defects in a synthetic diamond sample

We show that the orientation of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects in diamond can be efficiently controlled through chemical vapor deposition growth on a (111)-oriented diamond substrate. More precisely, we demonstrate that spontaneously generated NV defects are oriented with a ∼97% probability along the [111] axis, corresponding to the most appealing orientation among the four possible crystallographic axes. Such a nearly perfect preferential orientation is explained by analyzing the diamond growth mechanism on a (111)-oriented substrate and could be extended to other types of defects. This work is a significant step towards the design of optimized diamond samples for quantum information and sensing applications.

Photonic nano-structures on (111)-oriented diamond

We demonstrate the fabrication of single-crystalline diamond nanopillars on a (111)-oriented chemical vapor deposited diamond substrate. This crystal orientation offers optimal coupling of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center emission to the nanopillar mode and is thus advantageous over previous approaches. We characterize single native NV centers in these nanopillars and find one of the highest reported saturated fluorescence count rates in single crystalline diamond in excess of 106 counts per second. We show that our nano-fabrication procedure conserves the preferential alignment as well as the spin coherence of the NVs in our structures. Our results will enable a new generation of highly sensitive probes for NV magnetometry and pave the way toward photonic crystals with optimal orientation of the NV centers emission dipole.

Reduction of Dislocations in Single Crystal Diamond by Lateral Growth over a Macroscopic Hole

A low-dislocation diamond is obtained by homoepitaxial chemical vapor deposition on a standard moderate-quality substrate hollowed out by a large square hole. Dislocations are found to propagate vertically and horizontally from the substrate and to terminate at the top surface or at the sides of the hole, thus leaving the central part with a strongly reduced dislocation density.