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Physics Today

Diamond-defect clusters are measured with speed and precision

Alex Lopatka

Published Aug 8, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The improvement in measuring nitrogen–vacancy quantum sensors could make them more useful for observing correlated condensed matter, biological systems, and more.
DOI
10.1063/pt.upwb.mzmf

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Nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds can function as quantum sensors for measuring magnetic fields, temperature, and stress with high sensitivity. They are useful in various biological applications, such as for measuring the local magnetic and electrical fields and signal propagation in tissues as well as their local interaction dynamics. However, to enable measurements suitable for medical applications, an observation system that can noninvasively map neural activity from the magnetic fields generated by brain nerve cells with high spatial resolution and sensitivity is required. We fabricated a vertical waveguide array in a diamond containing nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers with cell size dimension using a green femtosecond Bessel beam laser. The red emission from NV centers within the waveguide is confined inside the waveguide (typically with a cell size of 15 μm) by the total internal reflection at its walls. This enables efficient optical confinement and improves the light collection performance of the NV center emission. We have also developed a sensor—called the diamond micro-NV center array device (MAED)—that allows the observation of local magnetic field distributions and have measured spatial distribution of magnetic field with cell-size accuracy. This approach makes it possible to perform localized measurements of electrical and magnetic properties, as well as dynamic mapping of biological systems. This technological innovation holds a significant potential for the noninvasive observation of functional networks in cortical neurons.
Abstract Quantum sensors based on nitrogen vacancy (NV) defects in diamond have a demonstrated capability to detect nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra from proximate molecular nuclei, thereby promising an alternative with higher sensitivity to conventional NMR spectrometers for micro-scale samples. Fluorescence-based readout of these sensors is limited by higher shot noise due to the small number of emitters and photoionisation induced instabilities, meaning there is still significant scope to maximise their sensitivity and temporal resolution. In this work, we demonstrate a new readout protocol based on parameter fitting to a precise model of the NV photo-physics, thereby demonstrating an improvement of 36% in sensitivity and 85% gain in measurement speed. Whereas typical approaches to improvement involve expensive diamond material, and optical and microwave engineering, our method can be readily implemented into existing NV quantum sensing protocols.
In modern-day quantum metrology, quantum sensors are widely employed to detect weak magnetic fields or nanoscale signals. Quantum devices, exploiting quantum coherence, are inevitably connected to physical constants and can achieve accuracy, repeatability, and precision approaching fundamental limits. As a result, these sensors have shown utility in a wide range of research domains spanning both science and technology. A rapidly emerging quantum sensing platform employs atomic-scale defects in crystals. In particular, magnetometry using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond has garnered increasing interest. NV systems possess a combination of remarkable properties, optical addressability, long coherence times, and biocompatibility. Sensors based on NV centers excel in spatial resolution and magnetic sensitivity. These diamond-based sensors promise comparable combination of high spatial resolution and magnetic sensitivity without cryogenic operation. The above properties of NV magnetometers promise increasingly integrated quantum measurement technology, as a result, they have been extensively developed with various protocols and find use in numerous applications spanning materials characterization, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), condensed matter physics, paleomagnetism, neuroscience and living systems biology, and industrial vector magnetometry. In this chapter, NV centers are explored for magnetic sensing in a number of contexts. In general, we introduce novel regimes for magnetic-field probes with NV ensembles. Specifically, NV centers are developed for sensitive magnetometers for applications where microwaves (MWs) are prohibitively invasive and operations need to be carried out under zero ambient magnetic field. The primary goal of our discussion is to improve the utility of these NV center-based magnetometers.