High-resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy using a solid-state spin sensor

High-resolution magnetic resonance spectroscopy using a solid-state spin sensor Nature 555, 7696 (2018). doi:10.1038/nature25781 Authors: David R. Glenn, Dominik B. Bucher, Junghyun Lee, Mikhail D. Lukin, Hongkun Park & Ronald L. Walsworth Quantum systems that consist of solid-state electronic spins can be sensitive detectors of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signals, particularly from very small samples. For example, nitrogen–vacancy centres in diamond have been used to record NMR signals from nanometre-scale samples, with sensitivity sufficient to detect the magnetic field produced by a single protein. However, the best reported spectral resolution for NMR of molecules using nitrogen–vacancy centres is about 100 hertz. This is insufficient to resolve the key spectral identifiers of molecular structure that are critical to NMR applications in chemistry, structural biology and materials research, such as scalar couplings (which require a resolution of less than ten hertz) and small chemical shifts (which require a resolution of around one part per million of the nuclear Larmor frequency). Conventional, inductively detected NMR can provide the necessary high spectral resolution, but its limited sensitivity typically requires millimetre-scale samples, precluding applications that involve smaller samples, such as picolitre-volume ...
Source: Nature - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Letter Source Type: research