Colloquium

Upcoming Colloquium

Design and construction of a Nitrogen-Vacancy mediated Optical Detection Magnetic Resonance (NV-ODMR) Spectrometer -- aka, a high-density Quantum Sensor Platform
Dr. Karoly Holczer, UCLA

March 24, 2025
11:00am in HSCI-105

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Fluorescence detection of an individual Nitrogen-Vacancy color-center (NV-) in diamond enables to identify and locate other electron-spin holding atoms within a ~30 nanometer radius sphere, using Magnetic Double Resonance experiments. A plethora of applications based on ingenious experiments have been envisioned using individual NV centers as spin-qubits for quantum sensor. However, to gain practical information, these single molecule experiments must be repeated millions of times -- while scanning over a surface or collecting statistics on a reversible chemical process -- making the measurement unpractically long. An alternative approach is to build a measurement platform where 106 - 108 experiments are run in parallel on a ~1 cm² diamond surface.

The long-term objective is to create a bio-analytical instruments, capable of quantitative mapping of the human proteome in personal (home) set-ting — a potential game changer of diagnostics and healthcare. First, I will describe the concept of such an instrument and proceed to define the technical parameter space for its realization. I will present the development direction chosen: a combination of an L-band pulsed EPR spectrometer with a fluorescence imaging system build around a 100nm thin diamond chip, placed in a micro fluidic cell. I will describe the status of the instrument construction and address the remaining design challenges.

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