Fabrication of single nickel-nitrogen defects in diamond by chemical vapor deposition

Fabrication of single nickel-nitrogen (NE8) defect centers in diamond by chemical vapor deposition is demonstrated. Under continuous-wave 745nm laser excitation single defects were induced to emit single photon pulses at 797nm with a linewidth of 1.5nm at room temperature. Photon antibunching of single centers was demonstrated using a Hanbury–Brown and Twiss interferometer. Confocal images revealed approximately 106 optically active sites∕cm2 in the synthesized films. The controlled fabrication of an NE8 based single photon source in synthetic diamond is important for fiber based quantum cryptography, and potentially linear optics quantum computing.