Fabrication of ${}^{15}{\text{NV}}^{-}$ centers in diamond using a deterministic single ion implanter

Abstract

Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are a platform for several important quantum technologies, including sensing, communication and elementary quantum processors. In this letter we demonstrate the creation of NV centers by implantation using a deterministic single ion source. For this we sympathetically laser-cool single ${}^{15}{\text{N}}_2^{+}$ molecular ions in a Paul trap and extract them at an energy of 5.9\,keV. Subsequently the ions are focused with a lateral resolution of 121(35)\,nm and are implanted into a diamond substrate without any spatial filtering by apertures or masks. After high-temperature annealing, we detect the NV centers in a confocal microscope and determine a conversion efficiency of about 0.6\,$\%$. The ${}^{15}\text{NV}$ centers are characterized by optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) on the hyperfine transition and coherence time.

13 pages, 7 figures