Statistical investigations on nitrogen-vacancy center creation

TL;DR

This study investigates the creation of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond through shallow ion implantation, combining experiments and simulations to understand yield factors and diffusion processes.

Contribution

It introduces a combined experimental and computational approach to analyze NV center formation, including channeling effects and diffusion mechanisms, with detailed theoretical calculations.

Findings

NV- yield from shallow implantation is 0.01-0.1%

Ion implantation followed by annealing at 1100K is most effective

Simulations show a 25% formation rate of NV centers after annealing

Abstract

Experiments show that shallow nitrogen implantations (<10keV) result in a negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center (NV-) yield of 0.01-0.1%. The most succesful technique for introducing NV- centers in the carbon matrix is ion implantation followed by annealing at 1100K. We investigated the influence of channeling effects during shallow implantation and statistical diffusion using molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) approaches. Energy barriers for the diffusion process were calculated using the density functional theory (DFT). Our simulations show a significant difference in the NV yield compared to the experiment. Statistically, 25% of the implanted nitrogens form a NV center after annealing.