Enhancing NMR sensitivity with diamond nitrogen-vacancy centres – Diamond-NMR

Dynamic nuclear polarisation (DNP) is a powerful method that enhances NMR sensitivity by transferring the large spin polarisation of
electrons to nuclei. But DNP is also limited because it requires cryogenic temperatures and paramagnetic doping that lower
resolution and sensitivity. A much better method would thus be direct polarisation of a given material from an external and highly
polarisable substrate. Synthetic diamonds containing nitrogen-vacancy centres would be an ideal platform to perform this operation
due to the large nuclear polarisations achievable upon laser illumination at room temperature. Such spin polarisations could possibly
be transferred from the diamond to another material, thus leading to a disrupting general method for enhancing NMR sensitivity.
This proposal aims to overcome this challenge by combining new instrumentation with tailored diamonds to maximise the nuclear
spin polarisation and to study the efficiency of its transfer across the diamond interface.