Abstract
Single-molecule nuclear magnetic resonance is a current challenge in the field of magnetic resonance spectroscopy and has important applications in chemical analysis and quantum computing. Through decoherence measurements of nitrogen–vacancy centres under dynamical decoupling control, the sensing of a single 13C nuclear spin at nanometre distance has recently been realized1,2,3. A further step towards the ultimate goal of structure analysis of single molecules would be the direct measurement of the interactions within single nuclear-spin clusters4. Here we sense a single 13C–13C nuclear-spin dimer located about 1 nm from the nitrogen–vacancy centre and characterize the interaction (∼690 Hz) between the two nuclear spins. From the measured interaction we derive the spatial configuration of the dimer with atomic-scale resolution. These results indicate that, in combination with advanced material-surface engineering, central spin decoherence under dynamical decoupling control may be a useful probe for nuclear magnetic resonance single-molecule structure analysis.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013CB921800), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11227901,91021005,10834005,11028510), the ‘Strategic Priority Research Program (B)’ of the CAS (Grant No. XDB01030400), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Hong Kong Research Grants Council (N_CUHK403/11, 402410 & HKU8/CRF/11G), the Chinese University of Hong Kong Focused Investments Scheme and the 1000 Plan Program for Young Talents. The authors thank A. Crosse for help to improve the readability of the manuscript.
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J.D. and R-B.L. proposed the idea. J.D. and F.S. designed the experimental proposal. P.W., X.K. and F.S. prepared the experimental set-up. F.S., F.K. and X.K. performed the experiments. J.D. supervised the set-up and experiments. N.Z. and F.S. carried out the calculation. F.S., N.Z., R-B.L. and J.D. wrote the paper. All authors analysed the data, discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Shi, F., Kong, X., Wang, P. et al. Sensing and atomic-scale structure analysis of single nuclear-spin clusters in diamond. Nature Phys 10, 21–25 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2814
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2814
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