Stabilisation of NV centres in diamond nanopillars at low temperature

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that alumina passivation stabilizes single photon emission from NV centers in diamond nanopillars at low temperatures and high vacuum, enhancing their robustness for nanoscale sensing applications.

Contribution

It extends alumina passivation to diamond nanostructures, showing improved stability of NV centers under harsh conditions compared to oxygen termination.

Findings

Alumina-coated nanopillars maintain NV single photon purity under laser exposure.

NV centers in alumina-coated nanopillars are stable at 6K and high vacuum.

Oxygen-terminated NV centers degrade under high laser intensity at low temperature.

Abstract

Degradation of near surface nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond under optical illumination has restricted their deployment in applications such as scanning NV magnetomety, particularly under harsh environment such as low temperatures and vacuum. Previously, alumina passivation of planar diamond samples has been shown to reduce the degradation of near surface ensemble NV centers in vacuum. Here, we expand this study to incorporate photonic nanostructures by analyzing the single photon emission characteristics of NV centers embedded in an array of alumina-coated diamond nanopillars in high vacuum and low temperature (6K, high vacuum) environments under non-resonant (522 nm) laser exposure. We find that, in contrast to the oxygen-terminated diamond nanopillars, NV centers in the alumina-coated nanopillars demonstrate negligible change in the single photon purity and brightness over the course of laser exposure in vacuum. At low temperature, NV centers under alumina termination demonstrate stable single photon emission, whereas under oxygen termination the single photon purity degrades under high intensity laser exposure. Alumina surface passivation is therefore shown as a viable path toward the realization of robust NV-diamond based nanoscale sensing under non-ambient atmospheric environments, including using diamond scanning probes.