Fabrication of single nickel-nitrogen defects in diamond by chemical vapor deposition

Fabrication of single nickel-nitrogen (NE8) defect centers in diamond by chemical vapor deposition is demonstrated. Under continuous-wave 745 nm laser excitation single defects were induced to emit single photon pulses at 797 nm with a linewidth of 1.5 nm at room temperature. Photon antibunching of single centers was demonstrated using a Hanbury–Brown and Twiss interferometer. Confocal images revealed approximately 10⁶ optically active sites/cm² in the synthesized films. The controlled fabrication of an NE8 based single photon source in synthetic diamond is important for fiber based quantum cryptography, and potentially linear optics quantum computing.3 page(s