Creation of silicon vacancy color centers with a narrow emission line in nanodiamonds by ion implantation

Abstract

Nanodiamonds containing silicon-vacancy (SiV) centers with high brightness, high photo-stability, and a narrow zero phonon line (ZPL) have attracted attention for bioimaging, nanoscale thermometry, and quantum technologies. One method to create such nanodiamonds is the milling of diamond films synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). However, this requires post-processing such as acid treatment and centrifugation after the milling process. Therefore, the number of SiV center-containing nanodiamonds made from an initial CVD diamond is small. An alternative method without these problems is the implantation of Si ions into preselected nanodiamonds. This method, however, has an issue regarding the ZPL linewidths, which are more than twice as broad as those in nanodiamonds synthesized by CVD. In order to reduce the linewidth, we employed annealing treatment at high temperatures (up to 1100°C) and high vacuum after the implantation. For an ion fluence of 1013 ions/cm2, a ZPL with a linewidth of about 7 nm at room temperature was observed for a nanodiamond with a median size of 29.9 ± 16.0 nm. This was close to the linewidth for nanodiamonds created by CVD.