Geometrical enhancement of low-field magnetoresistance in silicon

Inhomogeneity-induced magnetoresistance (IMR) reported in some non-magnetic semiconductors, particularly silicon, has generated considerable interest owing to the large magnitude of the effect and its linear field dependence (albeit at high magnetic fields). Various theories implicate spatial variation of the carrier mobility as being responsible for IMR. Here we show that IMR in lightly doped silicon can be significantly enhanced through hole injection, and then tuned by an applied current to arise at low magnetic fields. In our devices, the 'inhomogeneity' is provided by the p-n boundary formed between regions where conduction is dominated by the minority and majority charge carriers (holes and electrons) respectively; application of a magnetic field distorts the current in the boundary region, resulting in large magnetoresistance. Because this is an intrinsically spatial effect, the geometry of the device can be used to enhance IMR further: we designed an IMR device whose room-temperature field sensitivity at low fields was greatly improved, with magnetoresistance reaching 10% at 0.07?T and 100% at 0.2?T, approaching the performance of commercial giant-magnetoresistance devices. The combination of high sensitivity to low magnetic fields and large high-field response should make this device concept attractive to the magnetic-field sensing industry. Moreover, because our device is based on a conventional silicon platform, it should be possible to integrate it with existing silicon devices and so aid the development of silicon-based magnetoelectronics.     

Tomographic imaging using the nonlinear response of magnetic particles

The use of contrast agents and tracers in medical imaging has a long history. They provide important information for diagnosis and therapy, but for some desired applications, a higher resolution is required than can be obtained using the currently available medical imaging techniques. Consider, for example, the use of magnetic tracers in magnetic resonance imaging: detection thresholds for in vitro and in vivo imaging are such that the background signal from the host tissue is a crucial limiting factor. A sensitive method for detecting the magnetic particles directly is to measure their magnetic fields using relaxometry; but this approach has the drawback that the inverse problem (associated with transforming the data into a spatial image) is ill posed and therefore yields low spatial resolution. Here we present a method for obtaining a high-resolution image of such tracers that takes advantage of the nonlinear magnetization curve of small magnetic particles. Initial 'phantom' experiments are reported that demonstrate the feasibility of the imaging method. The resolution that we achieve is already well below 1 mm. We evaluate the prospects for further improvement, and show that the method has the potential to be developed into an imaging method characterized by both high spatial resolution as well as high sensitivity.     

A subfemtotesla multichannel atomic magnetometer

The magnetic field is one of the most fundamental and ubiquitous physical observables, carrying information about all electromagnetic phenomena. For the past 30 years, superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) operating at 4 K have been unchallenged as ultrahigh-sensitivity magnetic field detectors, with a sensitivity reaching down to 1 fT Hz(-1/2) (1 fT = 10(-15) T). They have enabled, for example, mapping of the magnetic fields produced by the brain, and localization of the underlying electrical activity (magnetoencephalography). Atomic magnetometers, based on detection of Larmor spin precession of optically pumped atoms, have approached similar levels of sensitivity using large measurement volumes, but have much lower sensitivity in the more compact designs required for magnetic imaging applications. Higher sensitivity and spatial resolution combined with non-cryogenic operation of atomic magnetometers would enable new applications, including the possibility of mapping non-invasively the cortical modules in the brain. Here we describe a new spin-exchange relaxation-free (SERF) atomic magnetometer, and demonstrate magnetic field sensitivity of 0.54 fT Hz(-1/2) with a measurement volume of only 0.3 cm3. Theoretical analysis shows that fundamental sensitivity limits of this device are below 0.01 fT Hz(-1/2). We also demonstrate simple multichannel operation of the magnetometer, and localization of magnetic field sources with a resolution of 2 mm.     

Nanoscale magnetic sensing with an individual electronic spin in diamond

Detection of weak magnetic fields with nanoscale spatial resolution is an outstanding problem in the biological and physical sciences. For example, at a distance of 10 nm, the spin of a single electron produces a magnetic field of about 1 muT, and the corresponding field from a single proton is a few nanoteslas. A sensor able to detect such magnetic fields with nanometre spatial resolution would enable powerful applications, ranging from the detection of magnetic resonance signals from individual electron or nuclear spins in complex biological molecules to readout of classical or quantum bits of information encoded in an electron or nuclear spin memory. Here we experimentally demonstrate an approach to such nanoscale magnetic sensing, using coherent manipulation of an individual electronic spin qubit associated with a nitrogen-vacancy impurity in diamond at room temperature. Using an ultra-pure diamond sample, we achieve detection of 3 nT magnetic fields at kilohertz frequencies after 100 s of averaging. In addition, we demonstrate a sensitivity of 0.5 muT Hz(-1/2) for a diamond nanocrystal with a diameter of 30 nm.     

高温超导量子干涉器磁测量中的电磁反演

基于Biot-Savart定律和空间滤波技术,采用二维傅里叶变换,研究磁场到电流的反演. 对高温超导量子干涉器(SQUID)测得的载流导线周围的磁场分布以及圆孔缺陷周围的涡流场激发的磁信号进行反演处理,并对所得的结果,特别是在傅里叶空间对截止频率的选择进行了初步探讨. 结果表明,较高的截止频率值能有效提高反演结果的空间分辨率,但增加了噪声信号对反演结果的影响;相对较低的截止频率值能更明显地去除噪声信号,同时导致反演结果的失真,降低了反演结果的空间分辨率. 利用缺陷周围的磁场数据反演出的电流分布,能够准确反映出被测样品中缺陷的位置、形状等基本情况.     

Spatial measurement on the evidence of ionospheric Alfvén resonator

Using the data of ULF/ELF electric and magnetic wave field measured on board AUREOL-3 satellite, by the high resolution spectral analyses, one obtained for the first time the spatial measurement on the evidence of ionospheric alfvén resonator. The result of the measurement indicates that there are 7. 8 Hz for fundamental frequency, 14 Hz for second resonant frequency in the electric field component, and also the spectral resonance structure, but not in the magnetic vertical component for the magnetic field components.     

无线电能传输中非正定磁介质的部分聚焦效应

对无线电能传输中非正定磁介质部分聚焦效应进行了数值研究.采用印刷电路板掩模蚀刻技术制备平面圆螺旋超材料,在兆赫兹波段,该超材料显示了非正定磁导率.数值模拟了磁偶极子的磁场强度经过空气与非正定磁介质后的空间分布.仿真分析发现,插入非正定磁介质后,在距离磁偶极子一定距离处的观测点,磁场强度得到了很大增强.此研究表明,利用非正定磁介质对倏逝波的部分聚焦效应,可以有效提高磁耦合谐振式无线电能传输系统的近场区磁场强度.     

Optical detection of liquid-state NMR

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in liquids and solids is primarily detected by recording the net dipolar magnetic field outside the spin-polarized sample. But the recorded bulk magnetic field itself provides only limited spatial or structural information about the sample. Most NMR applications rely therefore on more elaborate techniques such as magnetic field gradient encoding or spin correlation spectroscopy, which enable spatially resolved imaging and molecular structure analysis, respectively. Here we demonstrate a fundamentally different and intrinsically information-richer modality of detecting NMR, based on the rotation of the polarization of a laser beam by the nuclear spins in a liquid sample. Optical NMR detection has in fact a long history in atomic vapours with narrow resonance lines, but has so far only been applied to highly specialized condensed matter systems such as quantum dots. It has been predicted that laser illumination can shift NMR frequencies and thus aid detection, but the effect is very small and has never been observed. In contrast, our measurements on water and liquid 129Xe show that the complementary effect-the rotation of light polarization by nuclear spins-is readily measurable, and that it is enhanced dramatically in samples containing heavy nuclei. This approach to optical NMR detection should allow correlated optical and NMR spectroscopy on complex molecules, and continuous two-dimensional imaging of nuclear magnetization with spatial resolution limited only by light diffraction.     

Megagauss sensors

Magnetic fields change the way that electrons move through solids. The nature of these changes reveals information about the electronic structure of a material and, in auspicious circumstances, can be harnessed for applications. The silver chalcogenides, Ag2Se and Ag2Te, are non-magnetic materials, but their electrical resistance can be made very sensitive to magnetic field by adding small amounts--just 1 part in 10,000--of excess silver. Here we show that the resistance of Ag2Se displays a large, nearly linear increase with applied magnetic field without saturation to the highest fields available, 600,000 gauss, more than a million times the Earth's magnetic field. These characteristics of large (thousands of per cent) and near-linear response over a large field range make the silver chalcogenides attractive as magnetic-field sensors, especially in physically tiny megagauss (10(6) G) pulsed magnets where large fields have been produced but accurate calibration has proved elusive. High-field studies at low temperatures reveal both oscillations in the magnetoresistance and a universal scaling form that point to a quantum origin for this material's unprecedented behaviour.     

Nanoscale imaging magnetometry with diamond spins under ambient conditions

Magnetic resonance imaging and optical microscopy are key technologies in the life sciences. For microbiological studies, especially of the inner workings of single cells, optical microscopy is normally used because it easily achieves resolution close to the optical wavelength. But in conventional microscopy, diffraction limits the resolution to about half the wavelength. Recently, it was shown that this limit can be partly overcome by nonlinear imaging techniques, but there is still a barrier to reaching the molecular scale. In contrast, in magnetic resonance imaging the spatial resolution is not determined by diffraction; rather, it is limited by magnetic field sensitivity, and so can in principle go well below the optical wavelength. The sensitivity of magnetic resonance imaging has recently been improved enough to image single cells, and magnetic resonance force microscopy has succeeded in detecting single electrons and small nuclear spin ensembles. However, this technique currently requires cryogenic temperatures, which limit most potential biological applications. Alternatively, single-electron spin states can be detected optically, even at room temperature in some systems. Here we show how magneto-optical spin detection can be used to determine the location of a spin associated with a single nitrogen-vacancy centre in diamond with nanometre resolution under ambient conditions. By placing these nitrogen-vacancy spins in functionalized diamond nanocrystals, biologically specific magnetofluorescent spin markers can be produced. Significantly, we show that this nanometre-scale resolution can be achieved without any probes located closer than typical cell dimensions. Furthermore, we demonstrate the use of a single diamond spin as a scanning probe magnetometer to map nanoscale magnetic field variations. The potential impact of single-spin imaging at room temperature is far-reaching. It could lead to the capability to probe biologically relevant spins in living cells.     

Aero-optical aberration measuring method based on NPLS and its application

The existing methods for measuring aero-optical aberration suffer from several problems, such as low spatiotemporal resolution, sensitivity to environment, and integral effects. A new method for measuring aero-optical aberration of supersonic flow is proposed. Based on the self-developed measuring method of supersonic density field, the wavefront aberration induced by a cross-section of supersonic flow field could be measured by ray-tracing. Compared with other methods, the present one has three significant innovations: (1) high spatiotemporal resolution. Its time resolution is 6 ns, and the spatial resolution can reach up to micrometers; (2) it can avoid the integral effects and study the wavefront aberration induced by the flow field of interest locally; (3) it can also avoid the influence from the test section wall boundary layers and environmental disturbances. The present method was applied to supersonic flow around an optical bow cap. The results of high spatiotemporal resolution reveal fine wavefront structures, and show that shock waves, expansion waves and turbulent boundary layers have different impacts on the wavefront aberration.     

Non-destructive determination of local strain with 100-nanometre spatial resolution

Structure sizes of approximately 180 nm are now standard in microelectronics, and state-of-the-art fabrication techniques can reduce these to just a few tens of nanometres. But at these length scales, the strain induced at interfaces can locally distort the crystal lattice, which may in turn affect device performance in an unpredictable way. A means of non-destructively characterizing such strain fields with high spatial resolution and sensitivity is therefore highly desirable. One approach is to use Raman spectroscopy, but this is limited by the intrinsic approximately 0.5-microm resolution limit of visible light probes. Techniques based on electron-beam diffraction can achieve the desired nanometre-scale resolution. But either they require complex sample preparation procedures (which may alter the original strain field) or they are sensitive to distortional (but not dilational) strain within only the top few tens of nanometres of the sample surface. X-rays, on the other hand, have a much greater penetration depth, but have not hitherto achieved strain analysis with sub-micrometre resolution. Here we describe a magnifying diffraction imaging procedure for X-rays which achieves a spatial resolution of 100nm in one dimension and a sensitivity of 10(-4) for relative lattice variations. We demonstrate the suitability of this procedure for strain analysis by measuring the strain depth profiles beneath oxidized lines on silicon crystals.     

Radio-frequency scanning tunnelling microscopy

The scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) relies on localized electron tunnelling between a sharp probe tip and a conducting sample to attain atomic-scale spatial resolution. In the 25-year period since its invention, the STM has helped uncover a wealth of phenomena in diverse physical systems--ranging from semiconductors to superconductors to atomic and molecular nanosystems. A severe limitation in scanning tunnelling microscopy is the low temporal resolution, originating from the diminished high-frequency response of the tunnel current readout circuitry. Here we overcome this limitation by measuring the reflection from a resonant inductor-capacitor circuit in which the tunnel junction is embedded, and demonstrate electronic bandwidths as high as 10 MHz. This approximately 100-fold bandwidth improvement on the state of the art translates into fast surface topography as well as delicate measurements in mesoscopic electronics and mechanics. Broadband noise measurements across the tunnel junction using this radio-frequency STM have allowed us to perform thermometry at the nanometre scale. Furthermore, we have detected high-frequency mechanical motion with a sensitivity approaching approximately 15 fm Hz(-1/2). This sensitivity is on par with the highest available from nanoscale optical and electrical displacement detection techniques, and the radio-frequency STM is expected to be capable of quantum-limited position measurements.     

CALMET时空分辨率对CALPUFF模拟浓度场的影响

采用WRF输出的逐小时1 km分辨率预报风场作为CALMET诊断模式的输入, 生成不同时空分辨率的CALMET诊断风场, 耦合 CALPUFF得到逐分钟50 m分辨率浓度场, 在此基础上分析CALMET气象场时空分辨率对浓度场的影响, 并统计不同气象时空分辨率方案的计算耗时。结果表明, 当风向稳定且风速较大时, 较粗的时空分辨率亦能得到满意的风场和浓度场; 当风向转变且风速较小时, 时空分辨率对诊断风场和浓度场影响显著, 不同气象方案的浓度场差异可以高达40%; 风场转变期间, 当CALMET的时间步长大于30 min时, 加密气象网格会降低浓度场的模拟精度, 时间步长越长, 浓度场偏离越显著。综合考虑计算耗时和浓度场模拟准确性, 推荐在大气污染事故应急预警中采用10 min时间步长和400 m网格距的CALMET气象方案。     

长脉冲直线变压器驱动源磁芯输运效率研究

功率源的模块化是高功率电磁发射平台研究的一个重要发展方向,文章针对长脉冲功率源的模块化进行了分析,并对快脉冲直线变压器驱动源磁芯感应磁场的扰动进行了探讨,同时通过其激磁电流的求解对磁芯电流输运效率进行了理论计算,最后结合研究需要对快脉冲直线变压器驱动源的电压输运效率进行了实验,实验结果与理论计算基本一致,从而为模块化长脉冲功率源的研究打下了基础。     

An electronic Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Double-slit electron interferometers fabricated in high mobility two-dimensional electron gases are powerful tools for studying coherent wave-like phenomena in mesoscopic systems. However, they suffer from low visibility of the interference patterns due to the many channels present in each slit, and from poor sensitivity to small currents due to their open geometry. Moreover, these interferometers do not function in high magnetic fields--such as those required to enter the quantum Hall effect regime--as the field destroys the symmetry between left and right slits. Here we report the fabrication and operation of a single-channel, two-path electron interferometer that functions in a high magnetic field. This device is the first electronic analogue of the optical Mach-Zehnder interferometer, and opens the way to measuring interference of quasiparticles with fractional charges. On the basis of measurements of single edge state and closed geometry transport in the quantum Hall effect regime, we find that the interferometer is highly sensitive and exhibits very high visibility (62%). However, the interference pattern decays precipitously with increasing electron temperature or energy. Although the origin of this dephasing is unclear, we show, via shot-noise measurements, that it is not a decoherence process that results from inelastic scattering events.     

广义亥姆霍兹线圈中轴线上磁场的计算与分析

从毕奥—萨伐尔定律出发,结合亥姆霍兹线圈装置,首先研究了正三角形的广义亥姆霍兹线圈在其中轴线上的磁场分布情况。然后利用Mathematicas数值模拟了共轴正三角形线圈中心轴线上的磁场强度,得出了满足磁场均匀性的条件。     

新型方向性自差分涡流传感器的仿真设计与研究

传统涡流检测技术采用一个圆柱形的激励线圈来产生激励磁场,通过用检测线圈来收集扰动磁场,然而由于激励线圈引起的磁场要比缺陷引起的扰动磁场强很多,这种结构的传感器对缺陷的检测灵敏度低,需采用差分的方法来获取缺陷信息。提出了一种新型涡流传感器,其通过采用矩形激励线圈来改变激励磁场的空间分布,使得无需采用差分方法就可以获得缺陷信息。在对新型传感器进行原理分析的基础上,仿真分析了其与传统传感器探头缺陷检测灵敏度之间的差异。并对传感器尺寸和激励频率进行了优化设计,最后验证了该新型传感器对缺陷长度的定量检测能力。仿真结果表明,该新型传感器具有较高的检测灵敏度和缺陷定量精度,为以后单激励多检测阵列涡流传感器的研究奠定了基础。     

基于巨磁阻元件的涡流／磁一体化阵列传感器

根据涡流、漏磁以及磁记忆检测的特点,基于巨磁阻元件开发了涡流／磁一体化阵列传感器,将电磁无损检测中动态、静态电磁场的测量统一起来,按照检测要求进行常规涡流、脉冲涡流、任意波激励涡流、漏磁以及磁记忆等检测方式。通过分组引线降低了传感器的布线难度,具有较高的扫描检测速度衍4用串行通信将传感器中存储于Flash芯片内的各项参数传输到主机,进行各种补偿和设置,提高传感器的性能。该传感器具有应用范围宽、测量范围大、体积小、稳定性好以及空间分辨率高等特点。