Nanoscale zero-field electron spin resonance spectroscopy.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29674638.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-03969-4 and PMC identifier 5908811.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Electron spin resonance (ESR) spectroscopy has broad applications in physics, chemistry, and biology. As a complementary tool, zero-field ESR (ZF-ESR) spectroscopy has been proposed for decades and shown its own benefits for investigating the electron fine and hyperfine interaction. However, the ZF-ESR method has been rarely used due to the low sensitivity and the requirement of much larger samples than conventional ESR. In this work, we present a method for deploying ZF-ESR spectroscopy at the nanoscale by using a highly sensitive quantum sensor, the nitrogen vacancy center in diamond. We also measure the nanoscale ZF-ESR spectrum of a few P1 centers in diamond, and show that the hyperfine coupling constant can be directly extracted from the spectrum. This method opens the door to practical applications of ZF-ESR spectroscopy, such as investigation of the structure and polarity information in spin-modified organic and biological systems.