Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond are considered to be promising building blocks for emerging quantum technologies. At the same time, practical applications require them to be excited and controlled electrically. However, there is a lack of knowledge about their behavior in electrical driven systems. Here, we introduce a physical model to address the single-photon emission dynamics of electrically pumped NV center in diamond in a quantitative manner and present a detailed study of the single-photon emitting diode based on NV centers.
Emerging quantum information technologies require a source that emits single photons at predetermined times under electrical pumping. Color centers in diamond attract considerable attention as a room-temperature single-photon source. However, their electroluminescence has been shown only in steady-state and not on-demand. Here, we show how to control the single-photon electroluminescence (SPEL) of SiV centers in a proposed diamond diode and switch SiV center SPEL rate from 2 cps to 1 Mcps and vice versa in less than 3 ns. Our findings bring closer on-demand electrically-driven single-photon sources operating at room temperature.
Optical sources that deliver single photons on demand play a key role in quantum cryptography and optical quantum computations. At present, color centers in wide-bandgap semiconductors, such as the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) and silicon-vacancy (SiV) centers in diamond, are considered to be the most promising candidates for practical quantum information applications owing to their unique emission properties at room temperature. However, for practical reasons, single-photon sources should be pumped electrically, which is required for integrability, scalability, and energy efficiency. However, diamond and related wide-bandgap semiconductor materials are at the interface between insulators and semiconductors, which makes electrical excitation of color centers very challenging. Here, we report on our progress in the understanding of single-photon electroluminescence of color centers in diamond, discuss different factors affecting the brightness of these emitter under electrical excitation, and study how to improve the performance of electrically- pumped single-photon sources based on color centers in diamond.
Electrically-driven single-photon sources (SPSs) are required for the scalable quantum technologies. Color centers in diamond emerged as attractive candidates for room-temperature SPSs. SiV centers are especially attractive due to their outstanding emission properties. However, although electroluminescence from SiV centers has been demonstrated, the single-photon electroluminescence (SPEL) from a single center has not been achieved due to the low SPEL rate. Here, we explain why the SPEL rate in recent experiments was low to be resolved and design a diamond p-i-n diode with a SiV center and show how to achieve an SPEL rate of more than 900000 photons/s.