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Diamond nanosensors

The sense of colour centres

Nature Physics volume 7, pages 453–454 (2011)Cite this article

Single colour centres in diamond have already proved their merit for sensing magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution. Now they have been shown to be effective atomic-scale probes of electric fields, too.

So far, the standard sensing application of NV− centres, both single and in ensembles of trillions, is measuring magnetic fields, where they offer an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and spatial resolution2. The work of Dolde et al.1 now opens up the way to a whole new class of applications where the sensors monitor electric rather than magnetic field, with a remarkable nanometre-scale spatial resolution, allowing, for example, detection of a field from a single elementary charge from a distance of a fraction of a micrometre in a reasonable interrogation time of less than a minute.

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Figure 1: Nitrogen-vacancy (NV−) centre in diamond and its energy levels and transitions.
Figure 2: A schematic of a possible confocal-microscopy arrangement.

References

  1. Dolde, F. et al. Nature Phys. 7, 459–463 (2011).

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  2. Taylor, J. M. et al. Nature Phys. 4, 810–816 (2008).

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  3. Van Oort, E. & Glasbeek, M. Chem. Phys. Lett. 168, 529–532 (1990).

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  1. Dmitry Budker is in the Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA.,

    Dmitry Budker

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  1. Dmitry Budker
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Correspondence to Dmitry Budker.

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Budker, D. The sense of colour centres. Nature Phys 7, 453–454 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1989

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