Improvement of a focused ion beam fabricated diamond pillar for scanning ensemble nitrogen-vacancy magnetometry probe using an ultrapure diamond

Abstract

Scanning diamond nitrogen-vacancy probe microscopy (SNVM) is an important tool for studying nanoscale condensed-matter phenomena. Ga${}^{+}$-ion-focused-ion-beam (FIB) milling has been introduced as a method for fabricating SNVM, while the probe diameter is limited to a few micrometers due to Ga${}^{+}$-induced damage. We report a method for improving the quality of FIB-fabricated SNVM probes by polyvinyl alcohol and Pt/Pd capping, followed by post-fabrication UV/ozone exposure. The effectiveness of the method is confirmed by the fabrication of an 800 nm-diameter probe with shallow NV centers, demonstrating an imaging of maze-like magnetic domain structure with a resolution of a few hundred nanometers and an improved sensitivity of 6.7 $\mu$T/Hz$1/2$, while preserving spin coherence properties.