The shallow nitrogen-vacancy center of diamond exhibits excellent sensitivity and resolution in the magnetic detection and quantum sensing areas. Compared with other methods, low-energy carbon ion implantation doesn't need high-purity diamond and introduce new impurity atoms, but the formation mechanism of nitrogen-vacancy center is not clear. In this paper, shallow nitrogen-vacancy centers were created in the diamond by low energy carbon ion implantation and vacuum annealing, and the transformation mechanism of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond was studied by Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and positron annihilation analysis. The results showed that shallow nitrogen-vacancy can be obtained by carbon ion implantation combined with vacuum annealing. After implantation, superficial layer of diamond showed the damage zone including lattice distortion and amorphous carbon, and carbon-vacancy cluster defects (carbon atoms were surrounded by vacancy clusters) were generated. During the vacuum annealing process, the damaged area gradually transformed to the diamond structure through the recovery of the distortion area and the solid-phase epitaxy of the amorphous carbon area, accompanied by the continuous dissociation of carbon-vacancy cluster defects. When samples were annealed at 850 and 900, the℃℃ structure of the damaged area was partially repaired. While annealing at 950, not only the damaged laye℃ r was basically recovered, but nitrogen atoms captured the single vacancy obtained by the dissociation of carbon vacancy clusters, forming the nitrogen-vacancy centers.
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