Plasmonic enhancement of a silicon-vacancy center in a nanodiamond crystal

This work reports a rigorous and comprehensive three-dimensional electromagnetic computation to investigate and design photoluminescence enhancement from a single silicon-vacancy center (SVC) in a nanodiamond crystal embedded in various metallic nanoantennae, each having a different geometry. The study demonstrates how each antenna design enhances the photoluminescence of SVCs in diamond. In particular, our report discusses how the 2D or 3D curvature of the nanoantenna and the control of the local environment of the SVC can lead to significant field enhancement of its optical field. Our calculated optimal photoluminescence for each design enhances the emission intensity by 15–300× that of a single SVC without antenna. The enhancement mechanisms are investigated using four representative structures that can be fabricated under feasible and realistic growth conditions, i.e., spherical-, nanorod-, nanodisk-dimer, and bow-tie nanoantennae. These results demonstrate a method for rationally designing arbitrary metallic nanoantenna/emitter assemblies to achieve optimal SVC photoluminescence.