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Tin-vacancy in diamonds for luminescent thermometry

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2018-06-11
JournalApplied Physics Letters
AuthorsMasfer Alkahtani, I. S. Cojocaru, Xiaohan Liu, Tobias Herzig, Jan Meijer
InstitutionsP.N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Quantum Center
Citations83

Color centers in diamonds have shown promising potential for luminescent thermometry. So far, the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color center has demonstrated a high sensitivity for optical temperature monitoring in biological systems. However, the NV center requires microwave excitation which can cause unwanted heating, and the NV is also sensitive to non-axial magnetic fields, both of which can result in inaccurate temperature measurements. To overcome this drawback, the silicon-vacancy (SiV) and germanium-vacancy (GeV) color centers in diamonds have recently been explored and have shown good optical temperature sensitivity owing to the temperature dependent wavelength optical zero-phonon line. Here, we report optical temperature measurements using the recently discovered tin-vacancy (SnV) color center in diamond and show sensitivity better than 0.2 K in 10 s integration time. Also, we compare the relative merits of SnV with respect to SiV and GeV for luminescent thermometry. These results illustrate that there are likely to be many future options for nanoscale thermometry using diamonds.