A nitridation process of a diamond surface with nitrogen radical exposure far from the radio-frequency plasma for the stabilization of a negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV%) centers near the surface is presented. At a nitrogen coverage of as high as 0.9 monolayers, high average Rabi contrasts of 0.40 +/- 0.06 and 0.46 +/- 0.03 have been obtained for single NV% centers formed by shallow nitrogen implantation with acceleration voltages of 1 and 2 keV, respectively. This indicates that nitrogen termination by a radical exposure process produces an electric charge state suitable for single NV- centers near the surface compared with the states obtained for alternatively terminated surfaces. (C) 2017 The Japan Society of Applied Physics