SHIM 2015 Swift Heavy Ions in Matter

We exposed nitrogen-implanted diamonds to beams of swift heavy ions (1 GeV, 4MeV/u) and find that these irradiations lead directly to the formation of nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers, without thermal annealing. We compare the photoluminescence intensities of swift heavy ion activated NV centers to those formed by irradiation with low-energy electrons and by thermal annealing. NV yields from irradiations with swift heavy ions are 0.1 of yields from low energy electrons and 0.02 of yields from thermal annealing. We discuss possible mechanisms of NV center formation by swift heavy ions such as electronic excitations and thermal spikes. While forming NV centers with low efficiency, swift heavy ions could enable the formation of three dimensional NV assemblies over relatively large distances of tens of micrometers. Further, our results show that NV center formation is a local probe of (partial) lattice damage relaxation by electronic excitations in diamond. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02—05CH11231 and by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program. Ref.: [1] J. Schwartz, et al., J. Appl. Phys. 116, 214107 (2014)