Single photon emission from silicon-vacancy centres in CVD-nano-diamonds on iridium

TL;DR

This paper reports the fabrication of high-quality nano-diamonds on iridium with silicon-vacancy centres that act as bright, stable single-photon sources, featuring narrow zero-phonon lines and detailed atomic-level characterization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel microwave plasma CVD process for creating spatially isolated nano-diamonds with bright SiV-centres on iridium, and provides the first detailed fine structure measurement of a single SiV-centre.

Findings

Single photon count rates up to 4.8 Mcps at saturation.

Zero-phonon lines as narrow as 0.7 nm at room temperature.

First measurement of the fine structure of a single SiV-centre.

Abstract

We introduce a process for the fabrication of high quality, spatially isolated nano-diamonds on iridium via microwave plasma assisted CVD-growth. We perform spectroscopy of single silicon-vacancy (SiV)-centres produced during the growth of the nano-diamonds. The colour centres exhibit extraordinary narrow zero-phonon-lines down to 0.7 nm at room temperature. Single photon count rates up to 4.8 Mcps at saturation make these SiV-centres the brightest diamond based single photon sources to date. We measure for the first time the fine structure of a single SiV-centre thus confirming the atomic composition of the investigated colour centres.