Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are promising systems for quantum
technologies, including quantum metrology and sensing. A promising strategy for
the achievement of high sensitivity to external fields relies on the
exploitation of large ensembles of NV centers, whose fabrication by ion
implantation is upper limited by the amount of radiation damage introduced in
the diamond lattice. In this works we demonstrate an approach to increase the
density of NV centers upon the high-fluence implantation of MeV N2+ ions on a
hot target substrate (>550 {\deg}C). Our results show that, with respect to
room-temperature implantation, the high-temperature process increases the
vacancy density threshold required for the irreversible conversion of diamond
to a graphitic phase, thus enabling to achieve higher density ensembles.
Furthermore, the formation efficiency of color centers was investigated on
diamond substrates implanted at varying temperatures with MeV N2+ and Mg+ ions
revealing that the formation efficiency of both NV centers and
magnesium-vacancy (MgV) centers increases with the implantation temperature.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure