Fully integrated and CMOS compatible, nanoscale Quantum enhanced magnetic SENSors for scalable submiliHertz, room temperature Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy

Project Information

QSENS-NMR

Grant agreement ID: 101018843

DOI

10.3030/101018843

Project terminated on 28 February 2023

EC signature date 19 April 2021

Start date 16 January 2022

End date 15 January 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 262 948,80

EU contribution

€ 262 948,80

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAET ULM
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - QSENS-NMR (Fully integrated and CMOS compatible, nanoscale Quantum enhanced magnetic SENSors for scalable submiliHertz, room temperature Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy)

Reporting period: 2022-01-16 to 2024-01-15

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

1) What is the problem being addressed?

The goal of the QSENS-NMR is to address the main challenges that prevent diamond material to scale up thousands of quantum sensors on a single chip. These mainly consider challenging and very expensive waveguide nanofabrication which is not compatible with the standard semiconductor industry.

In this project we plant to use Silicon Carbide material as an alternative to diamond quantum sensors as it enables us to fabricate scalable, low cost quantum enhanced magnetometers integrated on a optical microchip using standard lithography techniques.

2) Why is it important for society?

The successful realization would demonstrate the feasibility to integrate quantum sensors into a optical chip to reach low cost and scalable commercial devices which can be used for NMR sensing of biological samples.

3) What are the overall objectives?

The goal of QSENS-NMR is to fabricate a single Silicon Carbide waveguide to demonstrate its fabrication feasibility and to perform quantum sensing experiments with implanted color centers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During my first two months of the project I was in the Ulm University where I learned how to work with confocal setup and diamond quantum sensors. Afterwards I moved to Singapore to work at Nanyang Technological University. However I got a great carrier opportunity to set up an BMBF funded independent research group in Ulm University which resulted to terminate the MSCA project after a total of 13.5 months of work.

However, during my stay in Singapore I performed the following work:

- build a confocal setup to establish Optical and Photoelectrical readout of defects in Diamond and other materials which are being still investigated to this date. I have also performed quantum sensing experiments with color centers in Silicon Carbide which has been published in:
[1] Z. Jiang, ...R. Cernansky., et al., “Quantum sensing of radio-frequency signal with NV centers in SiC”, Science Advances, 9, 20, May 2023

And we also performed a work on nuclear spin polarization in Hexagonal Boron Nitride which has been published on arxiv and is currently being under review:

[2] S. Ru, ...R. Cernansky., et al ,"Robust Nuclear Spin Polarization via Ground-State Level Anti-Crossing of Boron Vacancy Defects in Hexagonal Boron Nitride". arxiv, arXiv:2306.15960 2023

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

During the first year of the project we have demonstrated for the first time the ability to do high resolution quantum sensing of a radio-frequency signal using color centers in a bulk SiIlicon Carbide sample using a confocal setup configuration. However, the continuation of project had to be terminated early due to a great carrier opportunity of setting up a BMBF independent research group at the Institute for Quantum Optics at Ulm University.

In conclusion, the results of the MSCA fellowship had a great scientific impart which broadened our understanding to perform quantum sensing experiments with color centers in Silicon Carbide while at the same time it had a significant impact on my academic career as it helped me broaden my scientific network, acquire new research and personal skills and establish my own independent research group.

Microchip for quantum sensing