Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Atomic-scale sensing of the magnetic dipolar field from single atoms

Abstract

Spin resonance provides the high-energy resolution needed to determine biological and material structures by sensing weak magnetic interactions1. In recent years, there have been notable achievements in detecting2 and coherently controlling3,4,5,6,7 individual atomic-scale spin centres for sensitive local magnetometry8,9,10. However, positioning the spin sensor and characterizing spin–spin interactions with sub-nanometre precision have remained outstanding challenges11,12. Here, we use individual Fe atoms as an electron spin resonance (ESR) sensor in a scanning tunnelling microscope to measure the magnetic field emanating from nearby spins with atomic-scale precision. On artificially built assemblies of magnetic atoms (Fe and Co) on a magnesium oxide surface, we measure that the interaction energy between the ESR sensor and an adatom shows an inverse-cube distance dependence (r−3.01±0.04). This demonstrates that the atoms are predominantly coupled by the magnetic dipole–dipole interaction, which, according to our observations, dominates for atom separations greater than 1 nm. This dipolar sensor can determine the magnetic moments of individual adatoms with high accuracy. The achieved atomic-scale spatial resolution in remote sensing of spins may ultimately allow the structural imaging of individual magnetic molecules, nanostructures and spin-labelled biomolecules.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Experimental set-up for ESR–STM.
Figure 2: Magnetic dipole–dipole interaction.
Figure 3: Control of state degeneracy in an engineered nanostructure.
Figure 4: Magnetic imaging by using trilateration.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Abragam, A. & Bleaney, B. Electron Paramagnetic Resonance of Transition Ions (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Rugar, D., Budakian, R., Mamin, H. J. & Chui, B. W. Single spin detection by magnetic resonance force microscopy. Nature 430, 329–332 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Nowack, K. C., Koppens, F. H. L., Nazarov, Y. V. & Vandersypen, L. M. K. Coherent control of a single electron spin with electric fields. Science 318, 1430–1433 (2007).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Kotler, S., Akerman, N., Navon, N., Glickman, Y. & Ozeri, R. Measurement of the magnetic interaction between two bound electrons of two separate ions. Nature 510, 376–380 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Koppens, F. H. L. et al. Driven coherent oscillations of a single electron spin in a quantum dot. Nature 442, 766–771 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Pla, J. J. et al. High-fidelity readout and control of a nuclear spin qubit in silicon. Nature 496, 334–338 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Thiele, S. et al. Electrically driven nuclear spin resonance in single-molecule magnets. Science 344, 1135–1138 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Grinolds, M. S. et al. Nanoscale magnetic imaging of a single electron spin under ambient conditions. Nat. Phys. 9, 215–219 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Mamin, H. J. et al. Nanoscale nuclear magnetic resonance with a nitrogen-vacancy spin sensor. Science 339, 557–560 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Staudacher, T. et al. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy on a (5-nanometer)3 sample volume. Science 339, 561 –563 ( 2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Toyli, D. M., Weis, C. D., Fuchs, G. D., Schenkel, T. & Awschalom, D. D. Chip-scale nanofabrication of single spins and spin arrays in diamond. Nano Lett 10, 3168–3172 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Fuechsle, M. et al. A single-atom transistor. Nat. Nanotech. 7, 242–246 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Heinrich, A. J., Gupta, J. A., Lutz, C. P. & Eigler, D. M. Single-atom spin-flip spectroscopy. Science 306, 466–469 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Hirjibehedin, C. F., Lutz, C. P. & Heinrich, A. J. Spin coupling in engineered atomic structures. Science 312, 1021–1024 (2006).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Wiesendanger, R. Spin mapping at the nanoscale and atomic scale. Rev. Mod. Phys. 81, 1495–1550 (2009).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Heinrich, B. W., Braun, L., Pascual, J. I. & Franke, K. J. Protection of excited spin states by a superconducting energy gap. Nat. Phys. 9, 765–768 (2013).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Tsukahara, N. et al. Adsorption-induced switching of magnetic anisotropy in a single iron(II) phthalocyanine molecule on an oxidized Cu(110) surface. Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 167203 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Khajetoorians, A. A. et al. Atom-by-atom engineering and magnetometry of tailored nanomagnets. Nat. Phys. 8, 497–503 (2012).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Jacobson, P. et al. Quantum engineering of spin and anisotropy in magnetic molecular junctions. Nat. Commun. 6, 8536 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Zhou, L. et al. Strength and directionality of surface Ruderman–Kittel–Kasuya–Yosida interaction mapped on the atomic scale. Nat. Phys. 6, 187–191 (2010).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Chen, X. et al. Probing superexchange interaction in molecular magnets by spin-flip spectroscopy and microscopy. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 197208 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Baumann, S. et al. Electron paramagnetic resonance of individual atoms on a surface. Science 350, 417–420 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Paul, W. et al. Control of the millisecond spin lifetime of an electrically probed atom. Nat. Phys. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys3965 (2016).

  24. Baumann, S. et al. Origin of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and large orbital moment in Fe atoms on MgO. Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 237202 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Rau, I. G. et al. Reaching the magnetic anisotropy limit of a 3d metal atom. Science 344, 988–992 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Paul, W., Baumann, S., Lutz, C. P. & Heinrich, A. J. Generation of constant-amplitude radio-frequency sweeps at a tunnel junction for spin resonance STM. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 87, 074703 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Julliere, M. Tunneling between ferromagnetic films. Phys. Lett. A 54, 225–226 (1975).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Repp, J., Meyer, G., Olsson, F. E. & Persson, M. Controlling the charge state of individual gold adatoms. Science 305, 493–495 (2004).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors thank B. Melior for expert technical assistance and T. Greber for fruitful discussions. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Office of Naval Research. W.P. thanks the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) for fellowship support. A.J.M. acknowledges financial support from the NSERC CREATE and PGS D programmes. F.D.N. appreciates financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation (P300P2_158468 and PZ00P2_167965). K.Y. thanks the National Natural Science Foundation of China grant no. 61471337) for financial support. P.W. and S.R. gratefully acknowledge financial support from the German academic exchange service.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

T.C., W.P., C.P.L. and A.J.H. conceived the projects. T.C., W.P., S.R., A.J.M. and F.D.N. performed the experiments and analysed the data. T.C. wrote the manuscript and developed theoretical models and simulations. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Christopher P. Lutz or Andreas J. Heinrich.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information

Supplementary information (PDF 1250 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Choi, T., Paul, W., Rolf-Pissarczyk, S. et al. Atomic-scale sensing of the magnetic dipolar field from single atoms. Nature Nanotech 12, 420–424 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2017.18

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2017.18

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing