Magnetic spin imaging under ambient conditions with sub-cellular resolution

Abstract

The detection of small numbers of magnetic spins is a significant challenge in the life, physical and chemical sciences, especially when room temperature operation is required. Here we show that a proximal nitrogen-vacancy spin ensemble serves as a high precision sensing and imaging array. Monitoring its longitudinal relaxation enables sensing of freely diffusing, unperturbed magnetic ions and molecules in a microfluidic device without applying external magnetic fields. Multiplexed charge-coupled device acquisition and an optimized detection scheme permits direct spin noise imaging of magnetically labelled cellular structures under ambient conditions. Within 20 s we achieve spatial resolutions below 500 nm and experimental sensitivities down to 1,000 statistically polarized spins, of which only 32 ions contribute to a net magnetization. The results mark a major step towards versatile sub-cellular magnetic imaging and real-time spin sensing under physiological conditions providing a minimally invasive tool to monitor ion channels or haemoglobin trafficking inside live cells. Detecting the magnetic spins of a small number of atoms is important for applications such as magnetic resonance imaging. Here, Steinert et al.demonstrate that nitrogen-vacancy defect centres in diamond allow spin detection at room temperature at length scales smaller than human cells.