How to develop a synthetic diamond sensor? What are the advantages of diamond sensors?

Speaking of diamonds, everyone will think of sincere love, a happy marriage. In fact, in addition to beauty, diamonds have an unexpected practical effect, which is to create extremely sensitive sensors. Our lives have long been surrounded by a variety of sensors, from ECG monitoring to smoke alarms. Every day, sensors collect light, current, images and sound to monitor small changes in our body and surrounding environment. However, current sensors are still unable to detect nanometer-scale magnetic fields, which greatly hinders our exploration of the unknown. And diamond, with its special crystal structure, opens the door to a new world for us. The synthetic diamond sensors developed by DIADEMS are capable of measuring magnetic fields with unprecedented precision, and they are currently commercializing the results. This technology has been successful in four rookie companies.

Since the acquisition of Codys in 2016, Dedham has made great progress in his work. In that year, the consortium's goal was to create synthetic diamond sensors capable of detecting magnetic field distributions below the nanometer level. Now that the desired goals have been achieved, Diadems is beyond the expectations of all researchers, who are now developing market applications and conducting research on a potential new research project.

Nitrogen atoms are embedded in the diamond lattice

Dedham's sensors are based on the “Nitrate Vacancy” (NV) center in artificial ultra-pure diamonds. When a single carbon atom in an ultrapure single crystal diamond is replaced by a nitrogen atom, adjacent lattice spaces create a center of nitrogen vacancies, which is capable of detecting nanometer-scale magnetic fields. In order to better exploit the performance of the nitrogen bubble center, the nitrogen bubbles in the diamond need to be just below the crystal surface, because the effective magnetic coupling (measurement effect) depends on the close contact between the sensor and the sample material. Sensitive sensors for different devices can be produced if the nature of the nitrogen cavitation can be controlled, including the position and orientation of the injected nitrogen atoms.

How to do it?

For the Dedham research team, "ion implantation", which is the key to injecting nitrogen atoms into the correct position. Imagine that the nitrogen ions are incident on diamond crystals with an area of ​​about 4 square millimeters (4 mm square) and a thickness of only half a millimeter. The difficulty is quite small. How to operate? It is conceivable to directly implant nitrogen into the crystal surface of a few nanometers (1 nanometer = 10^-9 meters) by controlling the energy of the input ions.

Or use another new technology, which is to add nitrogen atoms to the diamonds that are still growing. DIADEMS's research team uses synthetic stones to create high-quality carbon-containing gases to create diamonds during their growth process (known as chemical vapor deposition). By adding nitrogen to these gases, a layer of nitrogen can be formed at a controlled location below the surface, and the performance of the nitrogen bubble center can be controlled.

Broad application prospects

It can be said that the successful development of the diamond nitrogen bubble sensor is of great significance. This means that we can analyze the material properties at a single molecular level, and many of our medical and computer problems will be solved.

Thierry Debuisschert, a collaborator of the Dedham project and Thales Research and Technology Center, said: "One of the applications is to make a wide-area magnetic imager for monitoring electronic circuits. It can work at room temperature and ambient atmosphere, so it is a new tool that is very convenient to use."

“There are other applications that can enhance the read/write head characteristics of high-density hard drives, which can increase the capacity of the disk; nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) requires higher sensitivity, and the use of this technology in MRI machines can reduce costs and Reducing the strength of the magnetic field; new photonic devices can improve the efficiency of NV fluorescence detectors; can be used in the spectral analysis of the GHz range of antiferromagnetic materials and the characterization of magnetic domains."

Because of this huge potential, we are not surprised to see some related projects emerging across Europe. For example, project partner AttoCube is currently developing a microscope that combines atomic and confocal combinations. This microscope uses a single NV center as the sensor and is primarily used for commercial use. Element 6 is another partner of Dedham and has done a lot of investment and project development based on NV's advanced materials. Thierry said: "The project partners have also launched four entrepreneurial projects: nVision, SQUTEC, qnmi and qzabre."

He added: "Since the end of the project, we have been very active. Our new goal is to increase bandwidth, sensitivity and resolution. We are still researching new applications, such as microwave antennas based on diamond optical resonators, high sensitivity. sensor."

The consortium also submitted a new proposal for further funding in Horizon 2020, which is currently being evaluated by the relevant unit. There are three goals: First, develop advanced applications based on magnetic field measurements, such as electric vehicles, early disease diagnosis, biology, robotics, and wireless communication management. The second is to create a new sensor to detect the temperature inside the cell, monitor the new state of the substance under high pressure, and sense the electric field with extremely high sensitivity. The third is to develop new measurement tools to describe the chemical structure of single molecules in the pharmaceutical industry, as well as the detailed structure of nanoscale spintronic devices.

The new project will develop new tools that are essential in society. With these new tools and equipment, the following expected results will be achieved: the development of the highest grade diamond material with ultra-low impurity levels and the development of advanced transmissions that overcome the residual noise in the sensing scheme. Protocols, as well as engineering optimization for micro and high efficiency devices.

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