Charge state modulation of nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond by applying a forward voltage across a p–i–n junction

Abstract Charge state control of the nitrogen vacancy center (NV center) in diamond is important to the realization of applications such as magnetometers or quantum information processing, because only negatively charged NV centers have attractive spin properties. We fabricated p–i–n (p-type–intrinsic–n-type) junctions to investigate the charge state properties of the NV centers in an ultrapure i-layer with a low impurity concentration. The photoluminescence of the ensemble of NV centers demonstrated that the charge state can be modulated by external voltage across the p–i–n junction. The charge state of the NV centers was tuned towards NV − by applying a forward bias below the built-in voltage.