Researchers from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) at Mumbai and Kharagpur have built a microscope that can image magnetic fields within microscopic two-dimensional samples that change over milliseconds.
- This has a huge potential for scientific applications, such as in measuring biological activity of neurons and dynamics of vortices in superconductors.
- This is the first time that such a tool has been built to image magnetic fields that change within milliseconds.
- The key aspect of this sensor is a “nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect centre” in a diamond crystal. S
- Such NV centres act as pseudo atoms with electronic states that are sensitive to the fields and gradients around them.
About nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect centre
- Crystal defects in diamond have emerged as unique objects for a variety of applications, both because they are very stable and because they have interesting optical properties.
- Embedded in nanocrystals, they can serve, for example, as robust single-photon sources or as fluorescent biomarkers of unlimited photostability and low cytotoxicity.
- The most fascinating aspect, however, is the ability of some crystal defects, most prominently the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, to locally detect and measure a number of physical quantities, such as magnetic and electric fields.
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