Optimizing synthetic diamond samples for quantum sensing technologies by tuning the growth temperature

Control of the crystalline orientation of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects in diamond is here demonstrated by tuning the temperature of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth on a (113)-oriented diamond substrate. We show that preferential alignment of NV defects along the [111] axis is improved when the CVD growth temperature is decreased, leading to 79% preferential orientation at 800∘C, as compared to only 47.5% at 1000∘C. This effect is then combined with temperature-dependent incorporation of NV defects during the CVD growth to obtain preferential alignment over dense ensembles of NV defects spatially localized in thin diamond layers. These results demonstrate that growth temperature can be exploited as an additional degree of freedom to engineer optimized diamond samples for quantum sensing applications. [Display omitted] •Preferential orientation of NVs for (113) growth is improved by decreasing deposition temperature.•Up to 79% of NVs are aligned along a single direction.•Dense ensembles of aligned NVs are created in 300 nm thin diamond layers at low growth temperature.•Long spin coherence properties of such oriented and localized NVs are preserved.