Impact of Helium Ion Implantation Dose and Annealing on Dense Near-Surface Layers of NV Centers

The implantation of diamonds with helium ions has become a common method to create hundreds-nanometers-thick near-surface layers of NV centers for high-sensitivity sensing and imaging applications; however, optimal implantation dose and annealing temperature are still a matter of discussion. In this study, we irradiated HPHT diamonds with an initial nitrogen concentration of 100 ppm using different implantation doses of helium ions to create 200-nm thick NV layers. We compare a previously considered optimal implantation dose of ∼10¹² He⁺/cm² to double and triple doses by measuring fluorescence intensity, contrast, and linewidth of magnetic resonances, as well as longitudinal and transversal relaxation times T₁ and T₂. From these direct measurements, we also estimate concentrations of P1 and NV centers. In addition, we compare the three diamond samples that underwent three consequent annealing steps to quantify the impact of processing at 1100 °C, which follows initial annealing at 800 °C. By tripling the implantation dose, we have increased the magnetic sensitivity of our sensors by 28 ± 5%. By projecting our results to higher implantation doses, we demonstrate that it is possible to achieve a further improvement of up to 70%. At the same time, additional annealing steps at 1100 °C improve the sensitivity only by 6.6 ± 2.7%.