Enhanced Imaging with Diamond Nitrogen Vacancy Centers: Twenty-Fold Increase in Imaging Speed Using Spin-to-Charge Readout Techniques

The nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond is an emerging tool for nanoscale imaging; and with recent demonstrations of single-molecule detection, imaging molecular structure is the next frontier. Incorporating single NV centers into scanning probe microscopy is a promising route toward imaging molecules with atomic-scale resolution. However, an outstanding challenge is the prohibitively long imaging time associated with point-by-point scanning and the inherent sparsity of signal from a single photon emitter. Here we demonstrate a twenty-fold speed-up in imaging time using a spin-to-charge readout technique, which maximizes the readout signal by converting the easily-demolished spin state into a stable charge state. Importantly, this enhancement is robust across many NVs, in particular those near the surface which are critical for imaging with high spatial resolution. I will show that our spin-to-charge assisted imaging technique provides sufficient sensitivity for second-scale detection and minute-scale imaging of single Gd spin labels: an important step toward NV-based imaging of single molecules.