Research Areas - (57) NV Centers

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Department(s)/lab(s): Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics | Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics (Loncar) @ Harvard
Summary:

Lončar's Laboratory for Nanoscale Optics engineers diamond and lithium-niobate nanophotonic devices β€” including silicon-vacancy (SiV) color-center spin-photon interfaces, entangled quantum memories, and remote entanglement-assisted phase-sensing protocols that beat the standard measurement limit β€” alongside quantum optomechanical control of single spins via engineered acoustic resonators, directly extending the NV/SiV-diamond quantum-sensing lineage toward chip-integrated, networked quantum-enhanced sensing.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics | Lukin Group @ Harvard
Summary:

Lukin's group is a leading center for quantum science built on NV- and SiV-center diamond spin qubits, neutral-atom (Rydberg) tweezer arrays, and hybrid quantum networks, spanning quantum sensing, quantum information processing, and many-body physics. This work builds directly on the lineage of NV ensemble quantum sensing experiments (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry) that first reached pT/√Hz-class magnetic sensitivities, which Lukin's own group helped pioneer and continues to extend toward nuclear-spin-register-based nanoscale NMR and distributed sensor networks.

Department(s)/lab(s): PME | Maurer Lab @ UChicago
Summary:

Develops quantum sensing platforms at the biology interface. Core NV-center work: (1) widefield NV magnetic imaging of action potentials in neurons and cardiac tissue; (2) NV-based single-molecule NMR at 14 T resolving molecular structure with single-molecule sensitivity; (3) charge-sensitive shallow NV nanoprobes monitoring real-time cellular electrophysiology; (4) biocompatible diamond surface functionalization enabling multiplexed DNA microarray biosensing; (5) fluorescent-protein spin qubits as biological alternatives to diamond NV (2025 paper, Physics World Top-10 Breakthrough). Runs full NV stack: hot implantation, widefield and confocal ODMR, T1/T2/Hahn echo/DEER/Rabi, automated fitting pipelines. 2026 Sloan Fellow. PhD Lukin/Harvard; postdoc Chu/Stanford. Argonne joint appointment.

Department(s)/lab(s): Division of Medicine / London Centre for Nanotechnology | McKendry Group / London Centre for Nanotechnology (Q-BIOMED) @ UCL
Summary:

McKendry co-directs Q-BIOMED, the UK's national quantum-biomedical-sensing research hub (UKRI/NIHR, ~GBP24M), which brings NV-diamond and other quantum sensors into clinical diagnostics. Her own group has developed nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond-labelled lateral-flow and rapid molecular tests -- including a quantum-enhanced SARS-CoV-2 antigen test and single-molecule HIV RNA detection -- that exploit resonant microwave control of the NV spin state to separate signal from background and push rapid point-of-care diagnostics toward single-molecule sensitivity, a direct human-diagnostics application of quantum sensing.

Department(s)/lab(s): Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering | Miller Quantum Biosensing Group @ UCL
Summary:

Miller develops nitrogen-vacancy nanodiamond quantum biosensors for rapid diagnostics, controlling the NV spin state with resonant green/microwave illumination to frequency-separate fluorescence signal from background and achieve single-molecule detection of nucleic acids (e.g. HIV RNA with a short isothermal amplification step) in lateral-flow and widefield formats. His current projects span nanodiamond sensors for point-of-care disease diagnostics, quantum sensing at neural-interface implants, and wide-field quantum sensing of large randomly-oriented nanodiamond ensembles in biological samples, actively recruiting PhD students through the Q-BIOMED hub.

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Department(s)/lab(s): Electronic and Electrical Engineering / London Centre for Nanotechnology | Morton Group / UCL Quantum Science and Technology Institute @ UCL
Summary:

Morton directs UCL's Quantum Science and Technology Institute and is Deputy Director of the Q-BIOMED hub. His group manipulates electron and nuclear spins in nanoscale materials (silicon donors, diamond defects) to build quantum sensors, quantum memories, and quantum computing hardware, and within Q-BIOMED is pursuing magnetic-resonance quantum sensing at the single-cell level. He is also a co-founder of the quantum computing spinouts Quantum Motion and Phasecraft.

Department(s)/lab(s): Chemistry – Photon Science Institute | Natrajan Group (Lanthanide Photophysics and Biosensing) @ Manchester
Summary:

Natrajan's group develops luminescent lanthanide complexes for chemical and biological sensing. Research directions: (1) Time-gated lanthanide luminescence sensing β€” long-lifetime Eu3+, Tb3+, and Yb3+ complexes with millisecond emission lifetimes for background-free sensing in cells and tissue; (2) Intracellular sensing β€” luminescent probes for sensing O2, pH, viscosity, and specific enzymes inside living cells with spatiotemporal resolution; (3) Chiral discrimination β€” circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) from Eu3+ complexes for enantioselective sensing; (4) Responsive probes β€” switchable lanthanide complexes as ratiometric sensors for biomedical imaging. The long-lifetime emission enables time-gating strategies analogous to quantum sensing protocols.

Department(s)/lab(s): Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Physics | Park Group @ Harvard
Summary:

Park's group works at the interface of physics, chemistry, and neuroscience, developing nanowire- and nanoelectrode-based intracellular electrophysiology probes as well as NV-diamond quantum sensing platforms (often in collaboration with Lukin), building on the same NV ensemble quantum-sensing lineage (DEER, nanoscale NMR, T1 relaxometry, pT/√Hz sensitivity) while also pushing nanoscale bioelectronic recording.

Department(s)/lab(s): Physics & Astronomy – Photon Science Institute | Parkinson Group (Ultrafast Spectroscopy of Photonic Materials) @ Manchester
Summary:

Parkinson's group uses ultrafast optical spectroscopy to study carrier dynamics in photonic materials with quantum device applications. Research directions: (1) Time-resolved photoluminescence β€” TRPL with single-photon counting to map exciton lifetimes, diffusion, and defect trapping in GaN, perovskite, and 2D semiconductor quantum wells; (2) Optical single-particle spectroscopy β€” isolating single nanowires or nanocrystals for defect-free measurements of intrinsic optical properties; (3) Photon-number statistics β€” Hanbury Brown–Twiss measurements of single-photon purity from quantum dots and localized excitons; (4) Semiconductor quantum sensing interfaces β€” studying how carrier dynamics affect the fidelity of semiconductor-based quantum sensors and emitters.

Department(s)/lab(s): School of Physics | Melbourne Materials Institute Diamond Group (Prawer) @ UMelb
Summary:

Prawer is the founding figure of Melbourne diamond science, spanning colour-centre quantum technology, diamond surface chemistry and β€” unusually β€” clinical translation. His group developed the nitrogen-doped ultrananocrystalline diamond electrode arrays used in the Australian diamond bionic eye, a hermetically sealed, chronically implantable retinal stimulator that has been through human implantation; that is a rare example of an exotic-materials sensing/stimulation technology carried into human trials. In parallel the group works on diamond surface termination and functionalisation for near-surface NV sensing, nanodiamond bioconjugation, and diamond as a radiation-hard detector material. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work β€” DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity β€” his surface- and materials-engineering work is precisely what sets the standoff distance, and hence the achievable pT/sqrt(Hz) sensitivity, of near-surface NV ensembles used for DEER and nanoscale NMR. Preferred attribute present: demonstrated human trials with a complex implanted technology.