Imaging nanoscale volumes of single spins with shallow nitrogen-vacancy quantum spin sensors in diamond

The single shallow nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center, as an atomic-sized quantum sensor, can be incorporated with scanning probe microscopy with the potential of imaging single molecule structure with atomic-scale resolution. Here we present NV-based imaging of electron spins patterned on the nanoscale structure, where we employ DNA origami, a powerful molecular self-assembly platform, to enable bottom-up patterning of single spin-containing molecules. Such molecular structures can serve as two-dimensional calibration ‘spin’ rulers for the development of NV nanometrology. Specifically, we demonstrate the synthesis of the Gd chelate labeled DNA origami structures and present images of these structures acquired with NV center T1 imaging. Lastly, we discuss the outlook for our imaging technique to image spin-labelled molecules at the single spin level.