Geometry dependence of micron-scale NMR signals on NV-diamond chips

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the geometry of diamond sensors and samples affects the NMR signals in NV-center-based quantum sensing, revealing that certain geometries can significantly enhance signal strength for small-volume applications.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the geometry dependence of NMR signals in NV-diamond sensors using Monte Carlo simulations, offering guidelines for optimizing sensor and sample design.

Findings

Signal depends strongly on NV-center orientation.

Optimal geometries can lead to diverging signals with sample volume.

Simulations cover spherical, cylindrical, and nearly-2D samples.

Abstract

Small volume nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) has recently made considerable progress due to rapid developments in the field of quantum sensing using nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers. These optically active defects in the diamond lattice have been used to probe unprecedented small volumes on the picoliter range with high spectral resolution. However, the NMR signal size depends strongly on both the diamond sensor's and sample's geometry. Using Monte-Carlo integration of sample spin dipole moments, the magnetic field projection along the orientation of the NV center for different geometries has been analysed. We show that the NMR signal strongly depends on the NV-center orientation with respect to the diamond surface. While the signal of currently used planar diamond sensors converges as a function of the sample volume, more optimal geometries lead to a logarithmically diverging signal. Finally, we simulate the expected signal for spherical, cylindrical and nearly-2D sample volumes, covering relevant geometries for interesting applications in NV-NMR such as single-cell biology or NV-based hyperpolarization. The results provide a guideline for NV-NMR spectroscopy of microscopic objects. Keywords: Nitrogen vacancy center, nuclear magnetic resonance, Monte-Carlo, quantum sensing, sample geometry, small volume NMR.