We report on the production of nanodiamonds (NDs) with 70-80 nm size via bead assisted sonic disintegration (BASD) of a polycrystalline chemical vapor deposition (CVD) film. The NDs display high crystalline quality as well as intense narrowband (7 nm) room temperature luminescence at 738 nm due to in situ incorporated silicon vacancy (SiV) centers. The fluorescence properties at room and cryogenic temperatures indicate that the NDs are, depending on preparation, applicable as single photon sources or as fluorescence labels.
We report fluorescence investigations and Raman spectroscopy on colloidal nanodiamonds (NDs) obtained via bead assisted sonic disintegration (BASD) of a polycrystalline chemical vapor deposition film. The BASD NDs contain in situ created silicon vacancy (SiV) centers. Whereas many NDs exhibit emission from SiV ensembles, we also identify NDs featuring predominant emission from a single bright SiV center. We demonstrate oxidation of the NDs in air as a tool to optimize the crystalline quality of the NDs via removing damaged regions resulting in a reduced ensemble linewidth as well as single photon emission with increased purity. We furthermore investigate the temperature dependent zero-phonon-line fine-structure of a bright single SiV center as well as the polarization properties of its emission and absorption.
A technique has been developed for depositing diamond crystals on the endfaces of optical fibers and capturing the fluorescence generated by optically active defects in the diamond into the fiber. This letter details the diamond growth on optical fibers and transmission of fluorescence through the fiber from the nitrogen-vacancy (N-V) color center in diamond. Control of the concentration of defects incorporated during the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth process is also demonstrated. These are the first critical steps in developing a fiber coupled single photon source based on optically active defect centers in diamond.
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 10^6 optically active sites/cm^2 in the synthesized films. The fabrication of an NE8 based single photon source in synthetic diamond is important for fiber based quantum cryptography. It can also be used as an ideal point-like source for near-field optical microscopy.
Great achievements have been made in alloying of two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), which can allow tunable band gaps for practical applications in optoelectronic devices. However, telluride-based TMDs alloys were less studied due to the difficulties of sample synthesis. Here, in this work we report the large-area synthesis of 2D MoTexSe2-x alloy films with controllable Te composition by a modified alkali metal halides assisted chemical vapor deposition method. The as-prepared films have millimeter-scale transverse size. Raman spectra experiments combining calculated Raman spectra and vibrational images obtained by density functional theory (DFT) confirmed the 2H-phase of the MoTexSe2-x alloys. The A1g mode of MoSe2 shows a significant downshift accompanied by asymmetric broadening to lower wavenumber with increasing value of x, while E12g mode seems unchanged, which were well explained by a phonon confinement model. Our work provides a simple method to synthesize large-scale 2H phase Te-based 2D TMDs alloys for their further applications.
Uniform single layer graphene was grown on single-crystal Ir films a few nanometers thick which were prepared by pulsed laser deposition on sapphire wafers. These graphene layers have a single crystallographic orientation and a very low density of defects, as shown by diffraction, scanning tunnelling microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. Their structural quality is as high as that of graphene produced on Ir bulk single crystals, i.e. much higher than on metal thin films used so far.