Large-scale fabrication of surface SiV- centers in a flexible diamond membrane

Abstract

Negatively charged Silicon-vacancy (SiV-) centers in diamond have great potential for optical sensing and bio-imaging applications. Therefore,developing a large-scale and cost-effective way of fabrication of SiV- centers is of great importance to promote their applications. Here, we report a method for large-scale fabrication of SiV- centers in a diamond membrane by using MeV Helium ion implantation. The diamond membrane is highly flexible with a thickness of 10 μm, made from a CVD diamond-on-Si wafer. By implanting the Helium ions on the nucleation side of the membrane followed by thermal annealing, we demonstrate the fabrication of a sub-micron thick SiV- layer in the surface region. Despite the polycrystalline structure of the diamond membrane, the SiV- centers exhibit a fluorescence lifetime of 1.08 ns, comparable to the SiV- centers fabricated in single crystal diamonds. By using a focused ion beam and varying the ion fluence, we demonstrate patterning of the SiV- centers of different densities. Due to the wafer-size and high flexibility of the diamond membrane and a good emission intensity of the SiV- centers, our method has great potential for making large-scale SiV- based diamond devices for applications such as bio-imaging or sensing.