Charge-State Stabilization of Neutral Group-IV Impurity-Vacancy Color Centers in Hydrogen-Terminated Diamond

Charge-state stabilization of the neutral group-IV impurity-vacancy color centers in diamond has thus far proved difficult to achieve reliably. The neutral group-IV color centers, however, provide a robust alternative to the NV⁻ center in diamond given their inversion symmetry which renders them less susceptible to spectral diffusion. In this work, we show that the ratio for the occurrences of SiV⁰ in hydrogen-terminated and oxygen-terminated diamond [see Zi-Huai Zhang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 166902 (2023)] can be accurately estimated from knowledge of the surface levels for the two terminations and we propose adsorption of halogens on diamond to further enhance the occurrence of SiV⁰. We leverage the notion presented in our earlier work [see Rodrick Kuate Defo et al. Phys. Rev. B 108, 235208 (2023)] that surface defects can modulate the donor levels of near-surface point defects to determine the influence of surface termination on the production of SiV⁰, and we additionally further elaborate our earlier work's carrier-capture formalism.