Quantum Magnetometry Facility

单个电子的自旋是最小的磁性传感器，工作在空间分辨率的最小限制下。量子技术界在过去几十年的研究已经开启了控制和检测单个电子自旋的能力，特别是与钻石中的氮空位(NV)点缺陷相关的自旋。将NV自旋集成到钻石AFM尖端，使扫描探头能够在广泛的温度范围内(从室温到宇宙中最冷的温度-开尔文制度)以几十纳米(比人类头发的宽度小10,000倍！)的高灵敏度和空间分辨率检测磁场。此外，钻石中的NV中心被用来探测和控制单个电子自旋(例如钻石表面的自旋标记生物蛋白质)，甚至单个原子的单个核自旋(钻石中的13C核)。赫里奥特-瓦特大学的量子磁力测量设备是一种‘交钥匙’磁感应仪器，基于钻石中的单个NV中心，工作温度低至非常接近绝对零度。这一设施将使科学家能够在不同的系统中证明新的物理，如非传统超导体中超导、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性有序等。这些研究将非常重要，例如，开发新材料和新的物理效应，可能导致下一代“超硅”电子器件。例如，我们的基础研究的长期应用可能是Mott晶体管，在这种晶体管中，栅极电压将使器件在绝缘体和金属状态之间切换，效率比目前的器件高得多。或者，它可以提供对神秘的室温超导体的洞察，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.