Nanoscale electric-field imaging based on a quantum sensor and its charge-state control under ambient condition.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 33911073.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-021-22709-9 and PMC identifier 8080810.
- 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
Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond can be used as quantum sensors to image the magnetic field with nanoscale resolution. However, nanoscale electric-field mapping has not been achieved so far because of the relatively weak coupling strength between NV and electric field. Here, using individual shallow NVs, we quantitatively image electric field contours from a sharp tip of a qPlus-based atomic force microscope (AFM), and achieve a spatial resolution of ~10 nm. Through such local electric fields, we demonstrated electric control of NV's charge state with sub-5 nm precision. This work represents the first step towards nanoscale scanning electrometry based on a single quantum sensor and may open up the possibility of quantitatively mapping local charge, electric polarization, and dielectric response in a broad spectrum of functional materials at nanoscale.