Diamond has established itself as an ideal material for photonics and optomechanics, due to its broad-band transparency and hardness. In addition, colour centres hosted within its lattice such as the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centre, have become leading candidates for use in quantum information processing, and quantum sensors. The fabrication of nanoscale devices coupled to high quality NVs has been an outstanding challenge due to their sensitivity to magnetic, electric and strain fields within their local environment. In this work, we show how the NV centre’s ground state electron spin can be used as an embedded atomic-scale probe of the local strain caused by focused ion beam milling of nanoscale devices. This technique can thus be used to measure, and optimise material and device fabrication processes to allow diamond to reach its full potential.

金刚石具有宽带透明性和硬度，因此已成为光子学和光力学的理想材料。此外，位于其晶格内的色心（例如氮空位（NV）中心）已成为用于量子信息处理和量子传感器的主要候选对象。由于纳米器件对本地环境中的磁场，电场和应变场敏感，因此制造与高质量NV耦合的纳米器件一直是一项艰巨的挑战。在这项工作中，我们展示了NV中心的基态电子自旋如何用作由纳米级设备的聚焦离子束铣削引起的局部应变的嵌入式原子级探针。因此，该技术可用于测量和优化材料和设备的制造过程，以使钻石发挥其全部潜力。