What is the problem/issue being addressed?
Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) centers in diamonds have an enormous potential to enable a new class of ultra-sensitive, low-cost and miniaturized Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) instruments. Although encouraging results have been achieved, existing NMR prototypes that employ NV centers are not ready to be used as universal analytical devices for real-world applications. For these systems to become a practical instrument, foremost it is necessary to increase their sensitivity to NMR signals to detect, for example, disease indicators such as bio-molecules that appear very diluted in the human body. It is also important that the detection achieves high-frequency resolution to discern the relevant signatures encoded in the wealth of information carried by NMR signals. Besides, current systems require expensive instrumentation that would constrain their widespread use, hence reducing the costs of the components of these systems is equally important to convert this technology economically viable and widely accessible.
Why is it important for society?
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has become the gold standard for an ever-increasing number of applications across multiple sectors such as medical, pharmaceutical, chemical, and food industries. Its versatility arises owing to the NMR phenomenon producing an information-rich signal as nuclear spins report about physical, chemical and biological processes in their local environment. However, much of the information that the NMR signal carries goes undetected as its strength is very weak. This inhibits its application to small volumes or concentrations such as many metabolites and other biomolecules that are key for drug discovery and for early detection of diseases such as cancer or brain degeneration. The proposed developments would pave the way towards a new class of NMR instrument that would complement existing NMR devices with higher sensitivity and resolution, and reduce its instrumentation costs in a large range of applications. Such disruptive technology could allow detecting diseases much earlier than ever and gaining insight into the functioning of cells at individual molecular level. Importantly, this device would complement the benefits of existing NMR systems at a fraction of their cost and size. Given the overarching use of NMR in areas such as health, environment and food, this project can have a broad positive impact on society.
What are the overall objectives?
The overall goal of this project is to develop pulse sequence protocols and hardware to increase the sensitivity of NV centers so they can be applied in practical settings for NMR purposes. The sensitivity enhancement is on the one hand pursued through optimizing and accelerating pulse sequence protocols. On the other hand, the hardware is carefully engineered and assessed to address signal losses to enhance the signal and attenuate noise sources to minimize the noise.
