Varying temperature and silicon content in nanodiamond growth: effects on silicon-vacancy centers

TL;DR

This study investigates how varying temperature and silicon content during nanodiamond growth influence the formation of silicon-vacancy centers, aiming to optimize nanodiamond properties for quantum applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates that growth conditions can be tuned to control nanodiamond size and SiV center abundance, enhancing their suitability for quantum technologies.

Findings

Growth temperature affects nanodiamond size distribution.

Silicon content influences SiV center abundance.

Optimized growth conditions improve quantum emitter quality.

Abstract

Nanodiamonds containing color centers open up many applications in quantum information processing, metrology, and quantum sensing. In particular, silicon vacancy (SiV) centers are prominent candidates as quantum emitters due to their beneficial optical qualities. Here we characterize nanodiamonds produced by a high-pressure high-temperature method without catalyst metals, focusing on two samples with clear SiV signatures. Different growth temperatures and relative content of silicon in the initial compound between the samples altered their nanodiamond size distributions and abundance of SiV centers. Our results show that nanodiamond growth can be controlled and optimized for different applications.