Determining the Dependence of Single Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Light Extraction in Diamond Nanostructures on Emitter Positions with Finite-Difference Time-Domain Simulations

Tianfei Zhu; Jia Zeng; Feng Wen; Hongxing Wang

doi:10.3390/nano14010099

Determining the Dependence of Single Nitrogen-Vacancy Center Light Extraction in Diamond Nanostructures on Emitter Positions with Finite-Difference Time-Domain Simulations

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Dec 31;14(1):99. doi: 10.3390/nano14010099.

Authors

Tianfei Zhu^{1

2}, Jia Zeng^{1

2}, Feng Wen^{1

2}, Hongxing Wang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Lab for Physical Electronics and Devices of the Ministry of Education, Faculty of Electronics and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
² Institute of Wide Bandgap Semiconductors, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.

Abstract

In this study, we obtained a diamond nanocone structure using the thermal annealing method, which was proposed in our previous work. Using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations, we demonstrate that the extraction efficiencies of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center emitters in nanostructures are dependent on the geometries of the nanocone/nanopillar, emitter polarizations and axis depths. Our results show that nanocones and nanopillars have advantages in extraction from emitter dipoles with s- and p-polarizations, respectively. In our simulations, the best results of collection efficiency were achieved from the emitter in a nanocone with s-polarization (57.96%) and the emitter in a nanopillar with p-polarization (38.40%). Compared with the nanopillar, the photon extraction efficiency of the emitters in the nanocone is more sensitive to the depth and polarization angle. The coupling differences between emitters and the nanocone/nanopillar are explained by the evolution of photon propagation modes and the internal reflection effects in diamond nanostructures. Our results could have positive impacts on the design and fabrication of NV center-based micro- and nano-optics in the future.

Keywords: FDTD simulations; emission efficiency; nanocones; nitrogen−vacancy center; single−crystal diamond.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi, grant numbers 2021JQ062 and 2021GY223, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), grant number 62074127.