Imaging dark charge emitters in diamond via carrier-to-photon conversion.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34995119.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abl9402 and PMC identifier 8741179.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The application of color centers in wide-bandgap semiconductors to nanoscale sensing and quantum information processing largely rests on our knowledge of the surrounding crystalline lattice, often obscured by the countless classes of point defects the material can host. Here, we monitor the fluorescence from a negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV<sup>−</sup>) center in diamond as we illuminate its vicinity. Cyclic charge state conversion of neighboring point defects sensitive to the excitation beam leads to a position-dependent stream of photo-generated carriers whose capture by the probe NV<sup>−</sup> leads to a fluorescence change. This “charge-to-photon” conversion scheme allows us to image other individual point defects surrounding the probe NV, including nonfluorescent “single-charge emitters” that would otherwise remain unnoticed. Given the ubiquity of color center photochromism, this strategy may likely find extensions to material systems other than diamond.