Nanoscale magnetic resonance detection towards nano MRI

• Speaker: Kim, Chulki (Sensor System Research Center, Korea Institute of Science Technology, Republic of Korea)
• Co-authors: Mark Sherwood, John Mamin, Dan Rugar (IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA, USA)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with its ability to provide three dimensional, elementally selective imaging has had a revolutionary impact in research fields including medicine and the neurosciences. In the sense that its extension to the nanometer scale could provide a powerful tool for non-destructively visualizing the three dimensional morphology of nanoscale structures, another impact is naturally expected with the development of nano MRI. Recently, negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (NV) color centers in diamond have been proposed as a promising system for nanoscale magnetic field sensing. NV centers are atomic-sized point defects and can be brought to within a few nanometers of magnetic samples, allowing for nanometric spatial resolution. Over the past few years, these properties have led to rapid progress in developing NV-based magnetometers and magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Here, we introduce some of recent demonstrations of proton magnetic resonance imaging using a NV spin sensor and discuss its limitations and research directions to overcome them.