{"id":209592,"date":"2025-03-23T22:02:59","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T03:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/single-qubit-sensing-puts-new-spin-on-quantum-materials-discovery"},"modified":"2025-03-23T22:02:59","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T03:02:59","slug":"single-qubit-sensing-puts-new-spin-on-quantum-materials-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/single-qubit-sensing-puts-new-spin-on-quantum-materials-discovery","title":{"rendered":"Single-qubit sensing puts new spin on quantum materials discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/single-qubit-sensing-puts-new-spin-on-quantum-materials-discovery2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Working at nanoscale dimensions, billionths of a meter in size, a team of scientists led by the Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed a new way to measure high-speed fluctuations in magnetic materials. Knowledge obtained by these new measurements, <a href=\"https:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/10.1021\/acs.nanolett.4c05401\"><em>published in Nano Letters<\/em><\/a>, could be used to advance technologies ranging from traditional computing to the emerging field of quantum computing.<\/p>\n<p>Many materials undergo phase transitions characterized by temperature-dependent stepwise changes of important fundamental properties. Understanding materials\u2019 behavior near a critical transition temperature is key to developing new technologies that take advantage of unique physical properties. In this study, the team used a nanoscale quantum sensor to measure spin fluctuations near a phase transition in a magnetic thin film. Thin films with magnetic properties at room temperature are essential for data storage, sensors and electronic devices because their magnetic properties can be precisely controlled and manipulated.<\/p>\n<p>The team used a specialized instrument called a scanning nitrogen-vacancy center microscope at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science user facility at ORNL. A nitrogen-vacancy center is an atomic-scale defect in diamond where a nitrogen atom takes the place of a carbon atom, and a neighboring carbon atom is missing, creating a special configuration of quantum spin states. In a nitrogen-vacancy center microscope, the defect reacts to static and fluctuating magnetic fields, allowing scientists to detect signals on a single spin level to examine nanoscale structures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Working at nanoscale dimensions, billionths of a meter in size, a team of scientists led by the Department of Energy\u2019s Oak Ridge National Laboratory revealed a new way to measure high-speed fluctuations in magnetic materials. Knowledge obtained by these new measurements, published in Nano Letters, could be used to advance technologies ranging from traditional computing [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,4,48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-nanotechnology","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}