Nitrogen-Terminated Diamond (111) Surface for Room-Temperature Quantum Sensing and Simulation

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond has shown great promise of nanoscale sensing applications, however, near surface NV suffer from relatively short spin coherence time that limits its sensitivity. This is presumably caused by improper surface termination. Using first-principles calculations, we propose that nitrogen-terminated (111) diamond provides electrical inactivity and surface spin noise free properties. We anticipate that the nitrogen terminated (111) surface can be fabricated by nitrogen plasma treatment. Our findings pave the way toward an improved NV-based quantum sensing and quantum simulation operating at room temperature.