Characterization of oxygen defects in diamond by means of density functional theory calculations

TL;DR

This study uses density functional theory to characterize oxygen-related point defects in diamond, revealing their electronic, magnetic, and optical properties, which are crucial for quantum technology and sensing applications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed first-principles analysis of oxygen defects in diamond, including their spectroscopic signatures and potential as qubits, filling a knowledge gap in defect characterization.

Findings

Oxygen defects are electrically active and affect electronic properties.

Identification of defect fingerprints in electron paramagnetic resonance spectra.

High-spin oxygen-vacancy defect shows rapid non-radiative decay, impacting qubit applications.

Abstract

Point defects in diamond are of high interest as candidates for realizing solid state quantum bits, bioimaging agents, or ultrasensitive electric or magnetic field sensors. Various artificial diamond synthesis methods should introduce oxygen contamination in diamond, however, the incorporation of oxygen into diamond crystal and the nature of oxygen-related point defects are largely unknown. Oxygen may be potentially interesting as a source of quantum bits or it may interact with other point defects which are well established solid state qubits. Here we employ plane-wave supercell calculations within density functional theory, in order to characterize the electronic and magneto-optical properties of various oxygen-related defects. Beside the trivial single interstitial and substitutional oxygen defects we also consider their complexes with vacancies and hydrogen atoms. We find that oxygen defects are mostly electrically active and introduce highly correlated orbitals that pose a challenge for density functional theory modeling. Nevertheless, we are able to identify the fingerprints of substitutional oxygen defect, the oxygen-vacancy and oxygen-vacancy-hydrogen complexes in the electron paramagnetic resonance spectrum. We demonstrate that first principles calculations can predict the motional averaging of the electron paramagnetic resonance spectrum of defects that are subject to Jahn-Teller distortion. We show that the high-spin neutral oxygen-vacancy defect exhibits very fast non-radiative decay from its optical excited state that might hinder to apply it as a qubit.