Increasing the coherence time of single electron spins in diamond by high temperature annealing

Negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV−) centers in diamond produced by ion implantation often show properties different from NVs created during the crystal growth. We observe that NVs created from nitrogen ion implantation at 30–300 keV show much shorter electron spin coherence time T2 as compared to the “natural” NVs and about 20% of them show switching from NV− to NV0. We show that annealing the diamond at T=1200 °C substantially increases T2 and at the same time the fraction of NVs converting from NV− to NV0 is greatly reduced.

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