New applications of nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond
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Abstract
Magnetometry is widely used industry, science and everyday life. Applications include navigation,
geology, chemical analysis and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), among many others.
The different types of magnetic-field sensors, depending on the application, may differ in sensitivity,
bandwidth, operational conditions (e.g. temperature and pressure), spatial resolution
and price.
In the last two decades, a new magnetometer type based on nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color
centers in diamond has gained a lot of attention. NV magnetometers are not the most sensitive
compared to superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) or atomic magnetometers,
but feature remarkable properties such as nanoscale resolutions and the ability to be
operated from cryogenic temperatures up to ~ 700K and under pressures up to 60GPa they
excel in various applications
This work presents several applications and advances in sensor development that show the
strengths of NV-center-based magnetometry.
In particular, micron sized diamond samples which In incorporate a layer with high NVcenter
density are employed to image vortices in a type-II superconductor using a wide-field
configuration.
Furthermore, a setup to image both magnetization of (ferro-)magnetic samples via light
polarization and the generated stray magnetic field via NV magnetic imaging is designed and
constructed. The functionality was demonstrated on a ferromagnetic thin film that shows
stripelike domains upon change of external magnetic field.
In addition to the aforementioned applications, a method to utilize (single-) NV centers at
zero field was developed. This was necessary due to failure of conventional NV magnetometry
protocols because of line crossings at zero field. With the use of circularly polarized microwave
fields, we were able to overcome this issue and extend NV-center magnetometry to applications
that require zero-field conditions, such as zero-field nuclear magnetic resonance or observation
of the domain structure of magnetic samples across the full hysteresis loop.