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SCANNING TUNNELLING MICROSCOPY

Steering a single nuclear spin

Nature Nanotechnology volume 13, pages 1093–1094 (2018)Cite this article

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Applying a radiofrequency voltage to the junction of a scanning tunnelling microscope allows the nuclear spins of single copper atoms to be detected and different copper isotopes to be distinguished.

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was first reported in 1946, and the importance of the discovery was quickly recognized by awarding the Nobel Prize in Physics to Felix Bloch and Edward Purcell six years later. NMR is a non-intrusive technique that detects and manipulates ensembles of nuclear spins to collect local information in solids or liquids. Over the years, the technique has become an essential tool in analytical chemistry, material science, biology and medicine. But nuclear spins interact only weakly with their surroundings, and this near-perfect isolation impedes the detection of single nuclear spins. Now, writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Kai Yang et al. show that this can be achieved for a single Cu nucleus using a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM)1.

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Fig. 1: Controlling the spin dynamics of a single nuclear spin.

References

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  1. Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, IPCMS, Strasbourg, France

    Laurent Limot

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  1. Laurent Limot
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Correspondence to Laurent Limot.

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Limot, L. Steering a single nuclear spin. Nature Nanotech 13, 1093–1094 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-018-0305-x

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