Active charge state control of single NV centres in diamond by in-plane Al-Schottky junctions

In this paper, we demonstrate an active control of the charge state of a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre by using in-plane Schottky-diode geometries with aluminium on hydrogen-terminated diamond surface. A switching between NV(+), NV(0) and NV(−) can be performed with the Al-gates which apply electric fields in the hole depletion region of the Schottky junction that induces a band bending modulation, thereby shifting the Fermi-level over NV charge transition levels. We simulated the in-plane band structure of the Schottky junction with the Software ATLAS by solving the drift-diffusion model and the Poisson-equation self-consistently. We simulated the IV-characteristics, calculated the width of the hole depletion region, the position of the Fermi-level intersection with the NV charge transition levels for different reverse bias voltages applied on the Al-gate. We can show that the field-induced band bending modulation in the depletion region causes a shifting of the Fermi-level over NV charge transition levels in such a way that the charge state of a single NV centre and thus its electrical and optical properties is tuned. In addition, the NV centre should be approx. 1–2 μm away from the Al-edge in order to be switched with moderate bias voltages.