The defect luminescences of {100} sector in nitrogen-doped diamond

Nitrogen is one of the most commonly-observed impurities in diamond, and affects the luminescence of these defects greatly. The complexes could be obtained from the nitrogen atom trapping the native defects such as self-interstitials, vacancies. In this study, a high-pressure and high-temperature synthesized nitrogen-doped diamond was characterized by cathode luminescence (CL) image, and the results showed that the blue region of this sample is the {100} growth sector. The {100} sector was then electron-irradiated in transmission electron microscope (TEM) and subsequently annealed at high temperatures so as to introduce the native defects to further form the nitrogen-containing complexes. All the optical properties of these defects in diamond were investigated by the low temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectra. The PL of {100} sector dominated the strong luminescence of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) complexes together with a weak 503 nm signal.