Plasmonic enhancement of a silicon-vacancy center in a nanodiamond crystal

Xiang Meng, Shang Liu, Jerry I. Dadap, and Richard M. Osgood, Jr.

Phys. Rev. Materials 1, 015202 – Published 19 June 2017

Abstract

This work reports a rigorous and comprehensive three-dimensional electromagnetic computation to investigate and design photoluminescence enhancement from a single silicon-vacancy center (SVC) in a nanodiamond crystal embedded in various metallic nanoantennae, each having a different geometry. The study demonstrates how each antenna design enhances the photoluminescence of SVCs in diamond. In particular, our report discusses how the 2D or 3D curvature of the nanoantenna and the control of the local environment of the SVC can lead to significant field enhancement of its optical field. Our calculated optimal photoluminescence for each design enhances the emission intensity by $15 – 300 \times$ that of a single SVC without antenna. The enhancement mechanisms are investigated using four representative structures that can be fabricated under feasible and realistic growth conditions, i.e., spherical-, nanorod-, nanodisk-dimer, and bow-tie nanoantennae. These results demonstrate a method for rationally designing arbitrary metallic nanoantenna/emitter assemblies to achieve optimal SVC photoluminescence.

Received 17 April 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.1.015202

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Plasmonics

Nanostructures

Photoluminescence

Atomic, Molecular & Optical

Authors & Affiliations

Xiang Meng^1,*, Shang Liu¹, Jerry I. Dadap¹, and Richard M. Osgood, Jr.^1,2

¹Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA
²Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA

^*meng@ee.columbia.edu

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Vol. 1, Iss. 1 — June 2017

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Images

Figure 1
(a) Atomic structure for SVC inside a nanodiamond crystal. (b) The nanodiamond in the near field of a dimer metal nanoantennae, illuminated by a monochromatic optical source. (c) Cross section view: nanodiamond crystal (dark gray), SVC (red), and ${SiO}_{2}$ (light gray) that has a thickness, $d$ , and each of the spherical $Au$ dimers has a radius $r$ . (d) and (e) Excitation and relaxation processes of the SVC under 532-nm excitation in (d) free space and (e) near the metallic nanoantennae.
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Figure 2
The intensity profile (left) of the diamond-antennae system under the illumination of a cw source at 532 nm. The intensity profile (right) for an excited SVC at its emission frequency. The excited SVC inside nanodiamond crystal is modeled as a classical dipole. The quantum yield is then obtained by measuring the power emitted from the dipole ( $P_{i}$ ) arising from the region denoted by the blue dashed-line box inside the nanodiamond host and power emitted from the dipole-nanoantennae system ( $P_{o}$ ), denoted by the green dashed box.
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Figure 3
(a) Plot of the intensity distribution of the cross section of a nanodiamond/spherical dimer complex under illumination by a cw source ( $λ = 532 nm$ ). (b) Plot of PL enhancement as the function of the radius of the spherical nanoparticle and the thickness of the ${SiO}_{2}$ layer coating. A contour plot also shows the PL enhancement of the SVC. (c) Plot of the intensity distribution of the cross section of a diamond/nanorod dimer complex under illumination by a cw source ( $λ = 532 nm$ ). The nanorod is a cylinder with a spherical cap. (d) The PL enhancements, calculated as a function of length of the nanorods, with aspect ratios (length:radius:curvature) to be 4:3:2, 4:2:2, and 4:2:1.
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Figure 4
(a) Plot of the intensity distribution of a cross section of a diamond/nanodisk dimer complex under illumination by a cw source ( $λ = 532 nm$ ). (b) Plot of the PL enhancement as a function of radius of the nanodisks, with a fixed disk height of 30 nm. (c) Plot of the intensity distribution of the cross section of a diamond/nanobow-tie complex under illumination by the same cw source. The nanobow-tie is modeled as a triangular disk, which is terminated such that the pointed tip has a finite radius. (d) Plot of the PL enhancement as a function of length of the bow-tie antenna between 60–160 nm, with the disk thickness to be constant at 30 nm, $θ = 60^{\circ}$ , and the base $W$ to be 60 nm.
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Figure 5
Plot of the PL enhancement as a function of the radius of the spherical (a) and nanodisk (b) dimers both with and without ${SiO}_{2}$ between antennae and diamond surfaces. (c) The normalized ohmic loss for spherical dimer as the function of the thickness of ${SiO}_{2}$ dielectric coating.
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