2017/12/26 by Amila Ariyaratne, Dolev Bluvstein, Bryan A. Myers +1 · 2 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques #Conductivity #Diamond #Diamond and Carbon-based Materials Research #Electrical conductor #Electrical resistivity and conductivity #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Image resolution #Nanoscopic scale #Relaxation (psychology) #Thermal conductivity #cond-mat.mes-hall #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04798-1
published as Nature Communications 9, 2406 (2018) · Supplementary information at end
arxiv created 2017/12/26 · openalex created_date 2018/01/05 · openalex publication_date 2018/06/13 · arxiv updated 2018/06/26 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The electrical conductivity of a material can feature subtle, non-trivial, and spatially varying signatures with critical insight into the material's underlying physics. Here we demonstrate a conductivity imaging technique based on the atom-sized nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond that offers local, quantitative, and non-invasive conductivity imaging with nanoscale spatial resolution. We monitor the spin relaxation rate of a single NV center in a scanning probe geometry to quantitatively image the magnetic fluctuations produced by thermal electron motion in nanopatterned metallic conductors. We achieve 40-nm scale spatial resolution of the conductivity and realize a 25-fold increase in imaging speed by implementing spin-to-charge conversion readout of a shallow NV center. NV-based conductivity imaging can probe condensed-matter systems in a new regime not accessible to existing technologies, and as a model example, we project readily achievable imaging of nanoscale phase separation in complex oxides.