Increased nitrogen-vacancy centre creation yield in diamond through electron beam irradiation at high temperature

The nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre is a fluorescent defect in diamond that is of critical importance for applications from ensemble sensing to biolabelling. Hence, understanding and optimising the creation of NV centres in diamond is vital for technological progress in these areas. We demonstrate that simultaneous electron irradiation and annealing of a high-pressure high-temperature diamond sample increases the NV centre creation efficiency from substitutional nitrogen defects by up to 117 % with respect to a sample where the processes are carried out consecutively, but using the same process parameters. This increase in fluorescence is supported by visible and infrared absorption spectroscopy experiments. Our results pave the way for a more efficient creation of NV centres in diamond as well as higher overall NV densities in the future.