This seminal work, by Patrick Maletinsky—now Professor at the University of Basel, then working at Harvard in Amir Yacoby’s group—revolutionized quantum nanoscale sensing. It explores the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamonds for advanced quantum sensing at the nanoscale. This requires precise placement and scanning of a single NV center near a sample’s surface while maintaining signal clarity. However, previous methods using diamond nanocrystals faced challenges with short lifetimes and poor light collection.
In this original work, Patrick Maletinsky et. al demonstrate the successful fabrication of an NV scanning probe carved out of bulk diamond. The first Quantilever MX prototype is used to image logical bits on a magnetic hard drive prototype from Hitachi GST, revealing out-standing spatial resolution and straightforward quantitative analysis. The results mark the true beginning of reproducible scanning NV magnetometry.
The work is published in: Maletinsky, P., Hong, S., Grinolds, M. et al. A robust scanning diamond sensor for nanoscale imaging with single nitrogen-vacancy centres. Nature Nanotech 7, 320–324 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2012.50
