Abstract
The nitrogen-vacancy defect centre in diamond has potential applications in nanoscale electric and magnetic-field sensing, single-photon microscopy, quantum information processing and bioimaging. These applications rely on the ability to position a single nitrogen-vacancy centre within a few nanometres of a sample, and then scan it across the sample surface, while preserving the centre's spin coherence and readout fidelity. However, existing scanning techniques, which use a single diamond nanocrystal grafted onto the tip of a scanning probe microscope, suffer from short spin coherence times due to poor crystal quality, and from inefficient far-field collection of the fluorescence from the nitrogen-vacancy centre. Here, we demonstrate a robust method for scanning a single nitrogen-vacancy centre within tens of nanometres from a sample surface that addresses both of these concerns. This is achieved by positioning a single nitrogen-vacancy centre at the end of a high-purity diamond nanopillar, which we use as the tip of an atomic force microscope. Our approach ensures long nitrogen-vacancy spin coherence times (∼75µs), enhanced nitrogen-vacancy collection efficiencies due to waveguiding, and mechanical robustness of the device (several weeks of scanning time). We are able to image magnetic domains with widths of 25nm, and demonstrate a magnetic field sensitivity of 56nT Hz(-1/2) at a frequency of 33kHz, which is unprecedented for scanning nitrogen-vacancy centres.
Highlights
Controllable atomic-scale quantum systems hold great potential as sensitive tools for nanoscale imaging and metrology [1,2,3,4,5,6]
In order to realize the full potential of these attractive features, we have developed a ”scanning NV sensor” (Fig. 1a), which employs a diamond nanopillar as the scanning probe, with an individual NV center artificially created within a few nanometers of the pillar tip through ion implantation
Optical addressing and readout of the NV center in the tip is performed through a long working-distance microscope objective, to accommodate the atomic force microscope (AFM)-head between the sample and objective
Summary
Controllable atomic-scale quantum systems hold great potential as sensitive tools for nanoscale imaging and metrology [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Sensitive nanoscale detection of various physical quantities is possible because the NV center forms a bright and stable single photon source [13] for optical imaging, and possesses a spin-triplet ground state which offers excellent magnetic [5] and electric [7] field sensing capabilities.
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