• DOI:10.1364/ome.9.004716
• Corpus ID: 203593249

Plasma treatments and photonic nanostructures for shallow nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond

@article{Radtke2019PlasmaTA,
  title={Plasma treatments and photonic nanostructures for shallow nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond},
  author={Mariusz Radtke and Lara Render and Richard Nelz and Elke Neu},
  journal={Optical Materials Express},
  year={2019}
}

• M. Radtke, Lara Render, +1 author E. Neu
• Published 30 September 2019
• Physics
• Optical Materials Express

We investigate the influence of plasma treatments, especially a 0V-bias, potentially low damage O$_2$ plasma as well as a biased Ar/SF$_6$/O$_2$ plasma on shallow, negative nitrogen vacancy (NV$^-$) centers. We ignite and sustain using our 0V-bias plasma using purely inductive coupling. To this end, we pre-treat surfaces of high purity chemical vapor deposited single-crystal diamond (SCD). Subsequently, we create $\sim$10 nm deep NV$^-$ centers via implantation and annealing. Onto the annealed SCD surface, we fabricate nanopillar structures that efficiently waveguide the photoluminescence (PL) of shallow NV$^-$. Characterizing single NV$^-$ inside these nanopillars, we find that the Ar/SF$_6$/O$_2$ plasma treatment quenches NV$^-$ PL even considering that the annealing and cleaning steps following ion implantation remove any surface termination. In contrast, for our 0V-bias as well as biased O$_2$ plasma, we observe stable NV$^-$ PL and low background fluorescence from the photonic nanostructures.