The electrical conductivity of a material can feature subtle, nontrivial, and spatially-varying signatures with critical insight into the material's underlying physics. Here we demonstrate a conductivity imaging technique based on the atom-sized nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond that offers local, quantitative, and noninvasive conductivity imaging with nanoscale spatial resolution. We monitor the spin relaxation rate of a single NV center in a scanning probe geometry to quantitatively image the magnetic fluctuations produced by thermal electron motion in nanopatterned metallic conductors. We achieve 40-nm scale spatial resolution of the conductivity and realize a 25-fold increase in imaging speed by implementing spin-to-charge conversion readout of a shallow NV center. NV-based conductivity imaging can probe condensed-matter systems in a new regime, and as a model example, we project readily achievable imaging of nanoscale phase separation in complex oxides.
@article{arxiv.1712.09209,
title = {Nanoscale electrical conductivity imaging using a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond},
author = {Amila Ariyaratne and Dolev Bluvstein and Bryan A. Myers and Ania C. Bleszynski Jayich},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.09209},
year = {2018}
}