Diamond nitrogen-vacancy centers created by scanning focused helium ion beam and annealing

Abstract

We demonstrate a method to create nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond using focused helium ion microscopy. Near-surface NV centers can be created with spatial resolution below 0.6 μm. We studied the density, creation efficiency, and spectral linewidths at optical and microwave frequencies for NV centers produced using various helium ion implantation doses. The optical linewidths are narrower than those of similar nitrogen-vacancy centers produced using nitrogen ion implantation.