Finding the right material platform for engineering efficient photonic interfaces to solid state emitters has been a long-standing bottleneck for scaling up solid state quantum systems. In this work, we demonstrate that nitrogen-rich silicon nitride, with its low background auto-fluorescence at visible wavelengths, is a viable quantum photonics platform by showing that nitrogen vacancy centres embedded in nanodiamonds preserve both their quantum optical and spin properties post-encapsulation. Given the variety of high-performance photonic components already demonstrated in silicon nitride, our work opens up a new avenue for building integrated photonic circuits using solid state emitters.
@article{arxiv.1909.09383,
title = {Single photon emission and single spin coherence of a nitrogen vacancy centre encapsulated in silicon nitride},
author = {Joe A. Smith and Jorge Monroy-Ruz and John G. Rarity and Krishna C. Balram},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1909.09383},
year = {2025}
}