Erbium Luminescence Centres in Single- and Nano-Crystalline Diamond—Effects of Ion Implantation Fluence and Thermal Annealing

We present a fundamental study of the erbiumluminescence centres in single- and nano-crystalline (NCD) diamonds. Both diamond forms were doped with Er using ion implantation with the energy of 190 keV at fluencesup to 5 × 1015 ions·cm−2, followed by annealing at controllable temperature in Ar atmosphere or vacuum to enhance the near infrared photoluminescence. The Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometryshowed that Er concentration maximum determined for NCD films is slightly shifted to the depth with respect to the Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter simulation. The number of the displaced atoms per depth slightly increased with the fluence, but in fact the maximum reached the fully disordered target even in the lowest ion fluenceused. The post-implantation annealing at 800 °C in vacuum had a further beneficial effect on erbiumluminescence intensity at around 1.5 μm, especially for the Er-doped NCD films, which contain a higher amount of grain boundaries than single-crystalline diamond.