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Magnetic sensors

A tip for better sensing

Nature Nanotechnology volume 8, pages 617–618 (2013)Cite this article

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Extremely sensitive and ultrasmall superconducting quantum interference devices can be fabricated on sharp nanoscale tips.

Superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) are the most sensitive detectors of magnetic flux. The devices also have the potential to act as versatile magnetic imaging tools if their size can be reduced and, if sufficiently miniaturized, they could even be used to directly detect and image the flipping of single electron spins. However, despite considerable effort in the past decade, the spatial resolution of scanning SQUID systems is still in the micrometre range and the spin sensitivity of the most sensitive nano-SQUIDs is still in the range of several tens of Bohr magnetons (μB) in a 1 Hz bandwidth. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Denis Vasyukov, Eli Zeldov and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of Colorado have now significantly improved the spin sensitivities of SQUID sensors by fabricating the devices on sharp nanoscale tips1.

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Figure 1: A scanning SQUID-on-tip1.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dieter Koelle is at the Department of Physics and Center for Collective Quantum Phenomena in LISA+, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany,

    Dieter Koelle

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  1. Dieter Koelle
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Correspondence to Dieter Koelle.

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Koelle, D. A tip for better sensing. Nature Nanotech 8, 617–618 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.179

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2013.179

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