Temperature sensing with nitrogen vacancy center in diamond

Abstract

Temperature is the most intuitive and widespread in various physical quantities. Violent changes in temperature usually implies the appearing of fluctuations in physical properties of an object. Therefore, temperature is often an important indicator. With the development of science and technology, the scales in many fields are being more and more miniaturized. However, there are no mature temperature measurement systems in the case where the spatial scale is less than 10 μm. In addition to the requirement for spatial resolution, the sensor ought to exert no dramatic influence on the object to be measured. The nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond is a stable luminescence defect. The measurements of its spectrum and spin state can be used to obtain the information about physical quantities near the color center, such as temperature and electro-magnetic field. Owing to its stable chemical properties and high thermal conductivity, the NV center can be applied to the noninvasive detection for nano-scale researches. It can also be used in the life field because it is non-toxic to cells. Moreover, combined with different techniques, such as optical fiber, scanning thermal microscopy, NV center can be used to measure the local temperatures in different scenarios. This review focuses on the temperature properties, the method of measuring temperature, and relevant applications of NV centers.