Advanced Fabrication of Single-Crystal Diamond Membranes for Quantum Technologies.

Many promising applications of single crystal diamond and its color centers as sensor platform and in photonics require free-standing membranes with a thickness ranging from several micrometers to the few 100 nm range. In this work, we present an approach to conveniently fabricate such thin membranes with up to about one millimeter in size. We use commercially available diamond plates (thickness 50 μ m) in an inductively coupled reactive ion etching process which is based on argon, oxygen and SF 6 .

Fabrication of all diamond scanning probes for nanoscale magnetometry.

The electronic spin of the nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond forms an atomically sized, highly sensitive sensor for magnetic fields. To harness the full potential of individual NV centers for sensing with high sensitivity and nanoscale spatial resolution, NV centers have to be incorporated into scanning probe structures enabling controlled scanning in close proximity to the sample surface. Here, we present an optimized procedure to fabricate single-crystal, all-diamond scanning probes starting from commercially available diamond and show a highly efficient and robust approach for integrating these devices in a generic atomic force microscope.

Quantitative nanoscale vortex imaging using a cryogenic quantum magnetometer.

Microscopic studies of superconductors and their vortices play a pivotal role in understanding the mechanisms underlying superconductivity. Local measurements of penetration depths or magnetic stray fields enable access to fundamental aspects such as nanoscale variations in superfluid densities or the order parameter symmetry of superconductors. However, experimental tools that offer quantitative, nanoscale magnetometry and operate over large ranges of temperature and magnetic fields are still lacking.

Quantum Einstein-de Haas effect.

The classical Einstein-de Haas experiment demonstrates that a change of magnetization in a macroscopic magnetic object results in a mechanical rotation of this magnet. This experiment can therefore be considered as a macroscopic manifestation of the conservation of total angular momentum and energy of electronic spins. Since the conservation of angular momentum is a consequence of a system's rotational invariance, it is valid for an ensemble of spins in a macroscopic ferromaget as well as for single spins.

Carbon nanotube nanoelectromechanical systems as magnetometers for single-molecule magnets.

Due to outstanding mechanical and electronic properties, carbon nanotube nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) were recently proposed as ultrasensitive magnetometers for single-molecule magnets (SMM). In this article, we describe a noninvasive grafting of a SMM on a carbon nanotube NEMS, which conserves both the mechanical properties of the carbon nanotube NEMS and the magnetic properties of the SMM. We will demonstrate that the nonlinearity of a carbon nanotube's mechanical motion can be used to probe the reversal of a molecular spin, associated with a bis(phthalocyaninato)terbium(III) single-molecule magnet, providing an experimental evidence for the detection of a single spin by a mechanical degree of freedom on a molecular level.