Nitrogen-vacancy centers created by N⁺ ion implantation through screening SiO₂ layers on diamond

We report on an ion implantation technique utilizing a screening mask made of SiO₂ to control both the depth profile and the dose. By appropriately selecting the thickness of the screening layer, this method fully suppresses the ion channeling, brings the location of the highest nitrogen-vacancy (NV) density to the surface, and effectively reduces the dose by more than three orders of magnitude. With a standard ion implantation system operating at the energy of 10 keV and the dose of 10¹¹ cm² and without an additional etching process, we create single NV centers close to the surface with coherence times of a few tens of μs.