Fabrication of single nickel-nitrogen defects in diamond by chemical vapor deposition

Fabrication of single nickel-nitrogen (NE8) defect centers in diamond by chemical vapor deposition is demonstrated. Under continuous-wave $745\mathrm{nm}$ laser excitation single defects were induced to emit single photon pulses at $797\mathrm{nm}$ with a linewidth of $1.5\mathrm{nm}$ at room temperature. Photon antibunching of single centers was demonstrated using a Hanbury–Brown and Twiss interferometer. Confocal images revealed approximately ${10}^6$ optically active $\text{sites}∕{\mathrm{cm}}^2$ in the synthesized films. The controlled fabrication of an NE8 based single photon source in synthetic diamond is important for fiber based quantum cryptography, and potentially linear optics quantum computing.