Magnetic resonance spectroscopy is a widely used technique for studying matter, based on the properties of paramagnetic cores and unpaired electrons. However, this method lacks sensitivity, requiring very large sets of identical objects to detect a signal. This limits spectral resolution when samples have heterogeneous properties.
The ONESPIN project seeks to go beyond this limit, by significantly increasing detection sensitivity to the point of detecting the spin of individual objects, using an innovative method that has recently been developed. This is based on the detection of microwave photons emitted during the radiative relaxation of an individual paramagnetic centre at very low temperature (10 mK), by a microwave photon counter, an ultra-sensitive detector based on a superconducting qubit developed at CEA Saclay.
ONESPIN has a number of objectives:
- Applying this technique to various single paramagnetic centres (organic radicals, molecules containing transition metal ions, enzymes, etc.), and obtaining the first high-resolution spectra of these individual molecules.
- Carrying out hyperfine spectroscopy and imaging of nuclear spins around these centres, which would make it possible to image individual molecules with resolution at the level of a single nuclear spin – an old dream of magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
- Developing nanoscale (10 nm) magnetic resonance imaging of paramagnetic centres in a micrometre-sized sample, by combining magnetic gradients with microwave photon counting detection.
