Laser writing of individual nitrogen-vacancy defects in diamond with near-unity yield

Professor Jason Smith and his fellow NQIT colleagues based in Engineering Science and at the University of Warwick demonstrate, in a paper published in Optica, the success of the new method to create particular defects in diamonds known as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) colour centres. These comprise a nitrogen impurity in the diamond (carbon) lattice located adjacent to an empty lattice site or vacancy. The ability to write NV centres into diamond with a high degree of control is an essential first step towards being able to engineer atomic defect structures for the development of a new generation of quantum information technologies.  Further news articles are available on the Oxford News and EurekAlert.