ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Quantum Sci. Technol.
Sec. Quantum Engineering
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frqst.2025.1667545
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced Material Design and Post-Treatment Techniques for Enhancing Color Centers in Quantum TechnologiesView all articles
Fabrication of oriented NV center arrays in diamond via femtosecond laser writing and reorientation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
- 2Toyota Research Institute North America, Ann Arbor, United States
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Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are widely recognized as highly promising solid-state quantum sensors due to their long room temperature coherence times and atomic-scale size, which enable exceptional sensitivity and nanoscale spatial resolution under ambient conditions. Ultrafast laser writing has demonstrated the deterministic spatial control of individual NV- centers, however, the resulting random orientation of the defect axis limits the magnetic field sensitivity and signal contrast. Here, we present an all-optical approach for reorienting laser-written NV- centers to lie along a specific crystallographic axis using femtosecond laser annealing. This technique enables the creation of spatially ordered NV- arrays with uniform orientation, for enhancing performance for quantum magnetometry. We achieve deterministic alignment along the optical axis in a (111)-oriented diamond substrate and along two selected axes in (100)-oriented diamond, paving the way for scalable, high-performance quantum devices based on orientation-controlled NV- centers.
Keywords: Femtosecond laser writing, Nitrogen-vacancy center, NV reorientation, Defect engineering, Photonic quantum technologies, Diamond, NV alignment
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Klink, Kirkpatrick, Tadokoro, Becker and Nicley. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Jonas Nils Becker, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
Shannon Singer Nicley, Michigan State University, East Lansing, United States
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