Single photon emission from silicon-vacancy colour centres in chemical vapour deposition nano-diamonds on iridium

Abstract

We introduce a process for the fabrication of high quality, spatially\nisolated nano-diamonds on iridium via microwave plasma assisted CVD-growth. We\nperform spectroscopy of single silicon-vacancy (SiV)-centres produced during\nthe growth of the nano-diamonds. The colour centres exhibit extraordinary\nnarrow zero-phonon-lines down to 0.7 nm at room temperature. Single photon\ncount rates up to 4.8 Mcps at saturation make these SiV-centres the brightest\ndiamond based single photon sources to date. We measure for the first time the\nfine structure of a single SiV-centre thus confirming the atomic composition of\nthe investigated colour centres.\n