CHAPTER 7 Photoluminescence: Nitrogen-Vacancy and Silicon-Vacancy color centers

Owing to its large bandgap of 5.5 eV, diamond can host a large variety of optically active defects (color centers). The most developed ones are two defects comprising in their structure an impurity atom (nitrogen or silicon), a vacant lattice site, and a trapped electron. These color centers are denoted as NVand SiV-. Modern views about the structure of these defects are given in this Chapter. It is illustrated how NVspin is initialized and read-out at room temperature by means of Optically Detected Magnetic Resonance, leading to appealing applications, such as spin qubits and spin sensors. State-of-the-art and challenges of NVand SiVproductions in nanodiamond are discussed. Some aspects of excitation modalities, photophysical parameters, detection techniques with ultra-high resolution, as well as biological applications of these two centers are addressed in this Chapter.