Heriot-Watt researchers have been awarded £2 million to explore the properties of magnetism through a new Quantum Magnetometry Facility.

Scientists from the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences (IPAQS) have been given the money by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to create the state-of-the-art facility at the university’s Edinburgh campus.

The site will host a quantum magnetometer – a UK-first project, and one of only a handful found anywhere in the world. The magnetometer exploits the magnetic properties of a single electron in diamond by using the rotation of the electron spin to detect magnetic fields.

External magnetic fields can be detected using the highly accurate sensor from a sample with a resolution 10,000x smaller than the width of a human hair.

Researchers will use this instrument to study magnetism in nano-materials at extremely low temperatures, close to absolute zero – colder than outer space.

Commenting on the news, Dr Cristian Bonato, principal investigator on the project, said: “This is an exciting opportunity to deploy a novel technique that the quantum technology community, including our own group, have been developing over the past decade.

“The great advantage of our magnetometer is that we can work in a large temperature range. So, we can go down to almost absolute zero and that is very important if we want to study the quantum behaviour of electrons in materials, which causes fascinating effects such as magnetism and superconductivity.

“The facility will be open for external users to access, and already more than ten groups from all across the UK have expressed interest in using it to investigate different types of novel materials.”

Heriot-Watt University has contributed £600,000 into the project, to purchase equipment and renovate a dedicated laboratory to host the Quantum Magnetometry Facility.

The project boosts Heriot-Watt’s research on novel quantum materials made from just single sheets of atoms that offer new functionalities compared to traditional materials, such as silicon.

Scientists hope their research could eventually lead to the development of new novel materials to build electronic devices with vastly improved memory storage and information processing capabilities.

The Quantum Magnetometry Facility is expected to be fully operational in 2023.

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Professor Brian Gerardot from the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, and co-investigator on the project, continued: “The great advantage of materials that are atomically thin, beyond their own unique intrinsic properties, is that they can be stacked together without restriction to form entirely new materials not possible in nature.

“By engineering the way the layers are stacked together, for instance by choosing their relative angle, we can control the way particles such as electrons interact with each other. And these quantum interactions determine the magnetic, electrical, and optical properties of the material.

“Remarkably, we can combine non-magnetic layers together to make a new quantum material that is magnetic, almost like magic.”

Gerardot added: “We want to use the new quantum magnetometer to probe these particle interactions in the new materials we fabricate at HWU in our state-of-the-art cleanroom facility.

“Once we understand the fundamental behaviour of these particle interactions, we can engineer the properties for future devices.”

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