Nanoscale electrical conductivity imaging using a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29921836.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-04798-1 and PMC identifier 6008463.
- 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
The electrical conductivity of a material can feature subtle, non-trivial, and spatially varying signatures with critical insight into the material's underlying physics. Here we demonstrate a conductivity imaging technique based on the atom-sized nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond that offers local, quantitative, and non-invasive conductivity imaging with nanoscale spatial resolution. We monitor the spin relaxation rate of a single NV center in a scanning probe geometry to quantitatively image the magnetic fluctuations produced by thermal electron motion in nanopatterned metallic conductors. We achieve 40-nm scale spatial resolution of the conductivity and realize a 25-fold increase in imaging speed by implementing spin-to-charge conversion readout of a shallow NV center. NV-based conductivity imaging can probe condensed-matter systems in a new regime not accessible to existing technologies, and as a model example, we project readily achievable imaging of nanoscale phase separation in complex oxides.