Bartington Instruments has announced that it is supporting diamond technology research, which will be carried out by the University of Warwick.

The research promises miniaturisation of magnetometers, making possible significant developments in high spatial resolution magnetocardiography (MCG) systems.

This new technology makes use of a long-known but difficult-to-exploit characteristic of diamonds with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres at a molecular level. These NV centres emit red fluorescence, which can be used to detect their magnetic resonance, essentially functioning as a magnetometer.

The research team led by Gavin Morley has already constructed a fibre-based NV magnetometer, in an unshielded environment and with no noise subtraction. Current developments are expected to demonstrate further advances toward our goal of developing commercially viable diamond NV magnetometers. The new project has funding from the EPSRC’s UK Quantum Technology Programme via the Networked Quantum Information Technologies (NQIT) Hub.