  Ion implantation underpins a vast range of devices and technologies that
require precise control over the physical, chemical, electronic, magnetic and
optical properties of materials. A variant termed recoil implantation - in
which a precursor is deposited onto a substrate as a thin film and implanted
via momentum transfer from incident energetic ions - has a number of compelling
advantages, particularly when performed using an inert ion nano-beam [Fr\"och
et al., Nat Commun 11, 5039 (2020)]. However, a major drawback of this approach
is that the implant species are limited to the constituents of solid thin
films. Here we overcome this limitation by demonstrating recoil implantation
using gas-phase precursors. Specifically, we fabricate nitrogen-vacancy (NV)
color centers in diamond using an Ar ion beam and the nitrogen-containing
precursor gases N2, NH3 and NF3. Our work expands the applicability of recoil
implantation to most of the periodic table, and to applications in which thin
film deposition or removal is impractical.
