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Recent Progress in Materials

Quantum Diamonds and the Future of Advanced Processors, Review on Benefits and Challenges

Mahyar Vefaghi, Hediyeh Rezaei Sedehi, Omid Ashkani

Published Aug 3, 2025• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Nowadays, the development of advanced processors plays a key role in the progress of humanity and the discovery of new sciences, and quantum computers play an essential role in this regard. In this regard, the development of new generation processors is necessary for the development of quantum computers. Quantum diamonds, with their astonishing properties, especially the presence of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in their crystalline structure, are among the most advanced emerging technologies in the field of quantum information processing. These diamonds, due to the stability of their electron spin, the ability to operate at room temperature, and the possibility of high-precision quantum control, are considered an ideal option for the development of next-generation computer processors. Central processors based on quantum diamonds have high potential in increasing computational power, reducing energy consumption, and improving quantum communication capabilities. Today, the physical and functional properties of quantum diamonds, their advantages over other quantum computing platforms, and their potential applications in the next generation of quantum processors have attracted the attention of many researchers, and efforts to develop and update the related sciences are continuously underway. This article attempts to provide a narrative review of quantum diamonds and their role in new processors, and examines the benefits and challenges.

DOI
10.21926/rpm.2503012

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Nowadays, the development of advanced processors plays a key role in the progress of humanity and the discovery of new sciences, and quantum computers play an essential role in this regard. In this regard, the development of new generation processors is necessary for the development of quantum computers. Quantum diamonds, with their astonishing properties, especially the presence of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in their crystalline structure, are among the most advanced emerging technologies in the field of quantum information processing. These diamonds, due to the stability of their electron spin, the ability to operate at room temperature, and the possibility of high-precision quantum control, are considered an ideal option for the development of next-generation computer processors. Central processors based on quantum diamonds have high potential in increasing computational power, reducing energy consumption, and improving quantum communication capabilities. Today, the physical and functional properties of quantum diamonds, their advantages over other quantum computing platforms, and their potential applications in the next generation of quantum processors have attracted the attention of many researchers, and efforts to develop and update the related sciences are continuously underway. This article attempts to provide a narrative review of quantum diamonds and their role in new processors, and examines the benefits and challenges.
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond have emerged as a focal point in quantum technology research due to their exceptional optical and electronic spin properties. This discovery not only expands our understanding of the material properties of diamond but also paves the way for practical applications in quantum technology. As a solid-state spin quantum system characterized by long electron spin coherence times and stable performance, NV color centers offer distinct advantages in quantum information processing. Recent advancements have enabled the fabrication of high-quality NV color centers with controllable concentration and spatial positioning through techniques such as in situ doping, ion implantation, and hybrid approaches. These technological breakthroughs have significantly enhanced the efficiency of NV center fabrication, thereby establishing a robust foundation for their widespread application in quantum sensing and quantum information technologies. This review provides a compre­hensive introduction to the structure and fundamental properties of NV color centers in diamond, an in-depth analysis of recent progress in their fabrication techniques, and a critical discussion of their current applications in quantum science and technology. Additionally, the challenges, open questions, and future research directions in NV color center studies are addressed.
Point defects in diamond, particularly nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, have emerged as powerful tools for a broad range of quantum technologies. These defects are promising candidates for quantum information science, serving as deterministic single-photon sources and solid-state quantum memories. They have also been employed as nanoscale quantum sensors to detect various physical quantities, including magnetic fields, electric fields, and temperature, owing to their long spin coherence time at room temperature. Development of these diamond-based quantum technologies has been rapidly boosted by a recent quantum leap in nanofabrication technologies for high-quality single-crystal diamond. Incorporating these color centers into diamond nanostructures with mature integrated photonics provides a promising route to build scalable and practical systems for quantum applications. This review discusses recent progress and challenges in the hybrid integration of diamond color centers on cutting-edge photonic platforms. Nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond have emerged as powerful tools for a broad range of quantum technologies. This review discusses recent progress and challenges in the hybrid integration of diamond color centers on cutting-edge photonic platforms.
Quantum computing has gained enormous attention from both academia and industry for its capability in handling problems that challenge the limit of classical computation. It is expected to shine in areas such as artificial intelligence, financial technology, drug development, and chemical reaction modeling. The quantum bit, or qubit, is the essential unit of quantum computers (QCs), and there are different types of implementations of the qubit, such as superconductor-based qubits, trapped ion qubits, quantum dot qubits, photonic qubits, topological qubits, and nitrogen vacancy (NV) diamond qubits, which are known to be able to function at room temperature with high longevity. In this article, NV-centered diamond fabrication, qubit structure, bit control, entanglement, and decoherence, as well as the pros and cons, are briefly introduced. At the end, the status of the commercialization of NV diamond QCs and the benchmark of different types of qubits are summarized.
Nitrogen–vacancy (NV) center in diamond is one of the most promising candidates to implement room temperature quantum computing. In this review, we briefly discuss the working principles and recent experimental progresses of this spin qubit. These results focus on understanding and prolonging center spin coherence, steering and probing spin states with dedicated quantum control techniques, and exploiting the quantum nature of these multi-spin systems, such as superposition and entanglement, to demonstrate the superiority of quantum information processing. Those techniques also stimulate the fast development of NV-based quantum sensing, which is an interdisciplinary field with great potential applications.
This work investigates the applicability of the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect center in diamond for quantum computation and metrology purposes. The NV center is a molecule like defect in the diamond lattice which is optically active and possesses an electron spin in its ground state. The spin can be used as a quantum bit and as a field sensor. The NV center has three major properties enabling individual control of single defects. Its optical properties depend on the spin state, the spin can be polarized optically and the spin state has an exceptionally long lifetime. Single NV centers can be controlled by optical and microwave radiation. Generally, the research on individually controllable quantum systems is not only motivated by quantum computation and communication. With the ongoing miniaturization nowadays electronic and electro-optic devices will soon reach the limit of single quantum building blocks. While in these applications the full complexity of single quantum systems might not be needed, small sensors based on single atoms or molecules might very well take advantage of the susceptibility of quantum coherences to environmental conditions. Major challenges for all approaches towards single quantum system control are the individual addressing, the measurement of the quantum state and the protection of quantum coherence from environmental noise. Today, there is a variety of systems (including the NV center) that allow control on the single quantum level. These are for example single photons, single ions and atoms in traps, single spins in semiconductors or single molecules in solid state systems. Rather mesoscopic examples are superconducting devices, nanomechanical oscillators or surface plasmon polaritons. Regarding the NV center it has been shown that the magnetic moment of its electron spin allows individual sensing and coupling to other surrounding electron and nuclear spins. Especially single nuclear spins were shown to be exceptional quantum memories. In this work small quantum registers of up to 5 spins have been used to test major requirements for a feasible quantum processor. Therefore, mainly artificially created high purity diamond samples with controlled spin and impurity concentration were used. The NV centers were either grown in or created via ion implantation techniques in a controlled fashion. As a first requirement for quantum computation entanglement among up to three spins has been generated and was verified by quantum state tomography. This proves the access of the full Hilbert space. Especially, entanglement among nuclear spins was very long-living. In further experiments this processor was used for first quantum algorithms like super-dense coding and the Deutsch algorithm. In addition, this work demonstrates new methods to initialize nuclear spin qubits into a desired quantum state. This is particularly important as improper initialization inhibits quantum computation. One of these methods is related to dynamic nuclear spin polarization and the other to measurement based state preparation. Nuclear spins in the diamond lattice originate mainly from the C-13 isotope. By artificially altering its content the influence on the NV center spin was investigated. The coherence times of the NV center were increasing inversely with the nuclear spin density. Even increasing nuclear spin density to offer more nuclear spin qubits to an operational quantum register was possible. As an alternative route of scaling up the quantum register pairs of closely spaced NV centers were investigated. For the first time two qubit gates among two NV centers mediated by magnetic dipolar coupling have been realized. Furthermore the sensing ability was demonstrated by measuring the relative distance of the two centers (10 nm) with sub-nm precision. Eventually, this work contains new insight into the electronically excited state of the NV center which allowed a more advanced control of the electron and nuclear spins. A comparably high magnetic field was used to decouple electron and nuclear spins. Finally, this allowed quantum nondemolition measurements on single nuclear spins which manifests in the observation of quantum jumps. The new insight was used to drastically improve the performance of quantum state readout. Summarizing, it was shown that single NV centers and proximal nuclear spins form versatile small quantum registers which can be interconnected with neighboring such NV quantum registers. Although the number of qubits used in this work is still small the experimental results propose a way of how to proceed when building a quantum computer. Regarding quantum metrology, however, the use of such a small register which can sense fields and store and process the results would already outperform a single NV electron spin by orders of magnitude.
Diamond based quantum technology is a fast emerging field with both scientific and technological importance. With the growing knowledge and experience concerning diamond based quantum systems comes an increased demand for performance. Quantum optimal control (QOC) provides a direct solution to a number of existing challenges as well as a basis for proposed future applications. Together with a swift review of QOC strategies, quantum sensing, and other relevant quantum technology applications of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, the authors give the necessary background to summarize recent advancements in the field of QOC assisted quantum applications with NV centers in diamond.