Engineering of Fermi level by nin diamond junction for control of charge states of NV centers

Abstract

The charge-state control of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is very important toward its applications because the NV centers undergo stochastic charge-state transitions between the negative charge state (NV⁻) and the neutral charge state (NV⁰) of the NV center upon illumination. In this letter, engineering of the Fermi level by a nin diamond junction was demonstrated for the control of the charge state of the NV centers in the intrinsic (i) layer region. By changing the size (d) of the i-layer region between the phosphorus-doped n-type layer regions (nin) from 2 μm to 10 μm, we realized the gradual change in the NV− charge-state population in the i-layer region from 60% to 80% under 532 nm excitation, which can be attributed to the band bending in the i-layer region. Also, we quantitatively simulated the changes in the Fermi level in the i-layer region depending on d with various concentrations of impurities in the i-layer region.