Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2013
The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond offers the opportunity to develop quantum technologies that leverage the defect’s atom-like properties using established engineering techniques from the semiconductor industry. While many NV center applications are motivated by the remarkable properties of isolated NV centers in bulk diamond, realizing these technologies requires addressing a number of device and materials engineering challenges unique to creating and controlling individual semiconductor spins. We review recent advances in interfacing NV centers with on-chip electronics that enable control over the defect’s spin and orbital degrees of freedom and review fabrication techniques for creating single NV centers with nanometer-scale placement accuracies. We also discuss efforts, motivated by the success of diamond NV center applications, to identify defect spins with similar properties to the NV center in more technologically mature semiconductors such as SiC.