Quantum Magnetometry Facility

单个电子的自旋是最小的磁传感器，在最小的空间分辨率限制下工作。在过去的几十年里，量子技术界的研究已经开启了控制和检测单个电子自旋的能力，特别是与金刚石中氮空位（NV）点缺陷相关的自旋。将NV自旋集成到金刚石AFM尖端中，使扫描探针能够在很宽的温度范围内（从室温到宇宙中最冷的温度-毫开尔文状态）以高灵敏度和几十纳米（比人类头发宽度小10,000倍）的空间分辨率检测磁场。此外，金刚石中的NV中心已被用于检测和控制单个电子自旋（例如金刚石表面上自旋标记的生物蛋白），甚至单个原子的单个核自旋（金刚石中的13C核）。赫瑞瓦特大学的量子磁计设备是一种“交钥匙”磁传感仪器，基于金刚石中的单个NV中心，在非常接近绝对零度的温度下工作。该设施将使科学家能够在不同的系统中证明新的物理，例如非常规超导体中超导性，铁磁性和反铁磁性之间的丰富相互作用，原子薄2D材料和异质结构中的磁有序等。这些研究将是非常重要的，例如，开发可能导致下一代“超硅”电子设备的新材料和新物理效应。我们的基础研究的长期应用可能是，例如，莫特晶体管，其中栅极电压将在绝缘体和金属状态之间切换器件，比目前的器件效率高得多。或者它可以提供对神秘的室温超导体的见解，其应用潜力是巨大的。

The spin of a single electron is the smallest possible magnetic sensor, operating at the smallest limits of spatial resolution. Research by the quantum technology community in the past couple of decades has opened the capability to control and detect individual electronic spins, in particular the spin associated with the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) point defect in diamond. Integration of NV spins into diamond AFM tips has enabled scanning probe detection of magnetic fields with high sensitivity and spatial resolution of few tens of nanometers (10,000x smaller than the width of a human hair!), over a broad temperature range (from room temperature to the coldest temperatures in the universe - milliKelvin regime). In addition, NV centres in diamond have been used to detect and control individual electronic spins (for example spin-labelled biological proteins on the diamond surface) or even individual nuclear spins of a single atom (13C nuclei in the diamond).The Quantum Magnetometry Facility at Heriot-Watt University is a 'turn-key' magnetic sensing instrument, based on single NV centres in diamond, operating down to temperatures very close to absolute zero. This facility will enable scientists to prove novel physics in different systems, such as the rich interplay between superconductivity, ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism in unconventional superconductors, magnetic ordering in atomically-thin 2D materials and heterostructures, etc. These investigations will be very important, for example, to develop new materials and new physical effects that may lead to next-generation "beyond-silicon" electronic devices. Long-term applications of our fundamental investigations could be, for example, Mott transistors, where the gate voltage would switch the device between insulator and metal states, with a much better efficiency than current devices. Or it could provide insights into the enigmatic room temperature superconductor, whose application potential is enormous.