Plasmon-enhanced sensitivity of spin-based sensors based on a diamond ensemble of nitrogen vacancy color centers.

A method for enhancement of the sensitivity of a spin sensor based on an ensemble of nitrogen vacancy (NV) color centers was demonstrated. Gold nanoparticles (NPs) were deposited on the bulk diamond, which had NV centers distributed on its surface. The experimental results demonstrate that, when using this simple method, plasmon enhancement of the deposited gold NPs produces an improvement of ∼10 times in the quantum efficiency and has also improved the signal-to-noise ratio by approximately ∼2.5 times. It was also shown that more electrons participated in the spin sensing process, leading to an improvement in the sensitivity of approximately seven times; this has been proved by Rabi oscillation and optical detection of magnetic resonance (ODMR) measurements. The proposed method has proved to be a more efficient way to design an ensemble of NV centers-based sensors; because the result increases in the number of NV centers, the quantum efficiency and the contrast ratio could greatly increase the device's sensitivity.