ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Quantum Sci. Technol.
Sec. Quantum Sensing and Metrology
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced Material Design and Post-Treatment Techniques for Enhancing Color Centers in Quantum TechnologiesView all 4 articles
Characterization of low-nitrogen quantum diamond for pulsed magnetometry applications
Provisionally accepted
Jiashen Tang1,2
Connor Roncaioli3
Andrew M. Edmonds4Atli Davidsson5Connor A. Hart2Matthew L. Markham4
Ronald L. Walsworth1,2,6*- 1University of Maryland, Department of Physics, College Park, United States
- 2University of Maryland, Quantum Technology Center, College Park, United States
- 3US Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, United States
- 4Element Six UK Ltd, Didcot, United Kingdom
- 5University of Maryland, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College Park, United States
- 6University of Maryland, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, College Park, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Ensembles of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are versatile quantum sensors with 3 broad applications in the physical and life sciences. The concentration of neutral substitutional 4 nitrogen ([N0 s]) strongly influences NV electronic spin coherence times, sensitivity, and optimal 5 sensing strategies. Diamonds with [N0 s] ∼1-10 ppm are a focus of recent material engineering 6 efforts, with higher concentrations being favorable for continuous-wave optically detected magnetic 7 resonance (CW-ODMR) and lower concentrations expected to benefit pulsed magnetometry 8 techniques through extended NV spin coherence times and improved sensing duty cycles. In 9 this work, we synthesize and characterize low-[N0 s] (∼0.8 ppm), NV-enriched diamond material, 10 engineered through low-strain chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth on high-quality substrates, 11 12C isotopic purification, and controlled electron irradiation and annealing. Our results demonstrate 12 good strain homogeneity in diamonds grown on CVD substrates and spin-bath-limited NV 13 dephasing times. By measuring NV spin and charge properties across a wide range of optical 14 NV excitation intensity, we provide direct comparisons of photon-shot-noise-limited magnetic 15 field sensitivity between the current low-[N0 s] and previously studied higher-[N0 s] (∼14 ppm) 16 NV-diamond sensors. We show that low-[N0 s] diamond can outperform higher-[N0 s] diamond at 17 moderate and low optical NV excitation intensity. Our results provide practical benchmarks and 18 guidance for selecting NV-diamond sensors tailored to specific experimental constraints and 19 sensing requirements.
Keywords: Quantum sensing, nitrogen-vacancy (NV), magnetic sensing, precision measurement, Chemical vapor deposition (CVD)
Received: 08 Sep 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tang, Roncaioli, Edmonds, Davidsson, Hart, Markham and Walsworth. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ronald L. Walsworth
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.