Transformation of Nitrogen Adsorbed on (111) Diamond Surface into Highly Aligned 2-Dimensional NV Ensemble

Nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond is expected as a magnetic sensor with high sensitivity at room temperature and detection of 1H spins out of the substrate by single NV center was reported [1]. For improvement of magnetic sensitivity, aligned shallow NV ensemble is required since the magnetic sensitivity is inversely proportional to a square root of number of NV centers contributing to the measurement [2, 3]. Delta-doping of nitrogen (N) was performed by diamond growth on N-terminated (001) diamond and estimated 2D concentration of NV centers was 1 x 1011 cm-2 [4]. This method can control the depth of NV ensemble precisely unlike ion implantation which are popular methods to fabricate NV ensemble. However, NV centers in the (001) delta-doping layer would be not aligned because possibility of each four sites adjacent to N becoming a vacancy are equivalent. In the case of (111) delta-doping layer, NV centers will be aligned because a top site is more preferable to become a vacancy than other three equivalent sites. Recently, we established the method to fabricate N-terminated diamond with high coverage without any damage on the surface [5]. We succeeded to fabricate aligned two-dimensional NV ensemble from N-terminated (111) diamond with half mono layer coverage embedded by high purity (111) diamond film.
The 2nd International Forum on Quantum Metrology and Sensing (IFQMS)