Amazing stuff with potential!
"A team of quantum engineers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has developed a new tool for measuring the ‘spin’ of subatomic particles with an unprecedented level of accuracy. The device, which is over a million times more sensitive than conventional spin resonance spectrometers, could revolutionize the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, and medicine. ...
conventional spectrometers require billions or trillions of spin measurements to generate accurate readings, making it difficult to measure microscopic samples, two-dimensional materials, and high-quality solar cells. ..."
conventional spectrometers require billions or trillions of spin measurements to generate accurate readings, making it difficult to measure microscopic samples, two-dimensional materials, and high-quality solar cells. ..."
"... In fields of research such as chemistry, biology, physics and medicine, the tool that is used to measure spins is called a spin resonance spectrometer. Normally, commercially produced spectrometers require billions to trillions of spins to get an accurate reading, but ... were able to measure spins of electrons in the order of thousands, meaning the new tool was about a million times more sensitive.
This is quite a feat, as there are a whole range of systems that cannot be measured with commercial tools, such as microscopic samples, two-dimensional materials and high-quality solar cells, which simply have too few spins to create a measurable signal. ...
This is quite a feat, as there are a whole range of systems that cannot be measured with commercial tools, such as microscopic samples, two-dimensional materials and high-quality solar cells, which simply have too few spins to create a measurable signal. ...
While other highly sensitive spectrometers using superconducting circuits had been developed in the past, they required multiple components, were incompatible with magnetic fields and had to be operated in very cold environments using expensive “dilution refrigerators”, which reach temperatures down to 0.01 Kelvin.
In this new development, A/Prof. Pla says he and the team managed to integrate the components on a single chip.
“Our new technology integrates several important parts of the spectrometer into one device and is compatible with relatively large magnetic fields. This is important, since measure the spins they need to be placed in a field of about 0.5 Tesla, which is ten thousand times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field.
“Further, our device operated at a temperature more than 10 times higher than previous demonstrations, meaning we don’t need to use a dilution refrigerator.” ..."From the abstract (Don't ask me what that all means! 😊 I don't like abstracts that are written only for area specialists to understand!):
"The use of superconducting microresonators together with quantum-limited Josephson parametric amplifiers has enhanced the sensitivity of pulsed electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements by more than four orders of magnitude. So far, the microwave resonators and amplifiers have been designed as separate components due to the incompatibility of Josephson junction–based devices with magnetic fields. This has produced complex spectrometers and raised technical barriers toward adoption of the technique. Here, we circumvent this issue by coupling an ensemble of spins directly to a weakly nonlinear and magnetic field–resilient superconducting microwave resonator. We perform pulsed ESR measurements with a 1-pL mode volume containing 6 × 107 spins and amplify the resulting signals within the device. When considering only those spins that contribute to the detected signals, we find a sensitivity of 2.8×10^3spins/Hz√
"The use of superconducting microresonators together with quantum-limited Josephson parametric amplifiers has enhanced the sensitivity of pulsed electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements by more than four orders of magnitude. So far, the microwave resonators and amplifiers have been designed as separate components due to the incompatibility of Josephson junction–based devices with magnetic fields. This has produced complex spectrometers and raised technical barriers toward adoption of the technique. Here, we circumvent this issue by coupling an ensemble of spins directly to a weakly nonlinear and magnetic field–resilient superconducting microwave resonator. We perform pulsed ESR measurements with a 1-pL mode volume containing 6 × 107 spins and amplify the resulting signals within the device. When considering only those spins that contribute to the detected signals, we find a sensitivity of 2.8×10^3spins/Hz√
for a Hahn echo sequence at a temperature of 400 mK. In situ amplification is demonstrated at fields up to 254 mT, highlighting the technique’s potential for application under conventional ESR operating conditions."
Fig. 1. Device design and resonator characterization.
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