Highly sensitive nitrogen-vacancy quantum sensors (QSs) hold enormous promise for scientific research, but a lack of standardised adoption methods has prevented universities and businesses from reaping the benefits. The NoQTeS project unites twelve partners across nine countries—including Sparrow Quantum—to design solutions to boost QS adoption rates across Europe.
Solid-state QSs can measure certain physical quantities with unprecedented spatial resolution and high sensitivity, lending themselves to diverse cross-industry applications. Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centreshave among the highest potential of all QSs, but few academic or commercial entities can realise this potential without standardised methods for adoption—and these methods can only be designed by a few highly specialised experts.
To boost QS usage and adoption rates, the EU has pledged support for the “Normating colour-centre-based quantum sensing technology towards industrial application and standards” (NoQTeS) project to develop standardised techniques for the creation and characterisation of NV-based QSs for nanoscale and high-sensitivity sensing of electromagnetic fields, temperature, or pressure.
A leading provider of single-photon sources, Sparrow Quantum will support the NoQTes project by identifying and validating standard procedures for robust characterisation techniques.
As they are both quantum emitters, the characterisation of NV centres often resembles the characterisation of Sparrow Quantum’s single-photon sources, including the flagship Sparrow Core chip. This overlap in characterisation techniques, along with Sparrow Quantum’s experience in commercialising quantum research, makes Sparrow the natural choice to design standardised characterisation techniques for quantum emitters/single-photon sources in NV centres.
Among the NoQTeS partners, Sparrow will collaborate closely with the Danish National Metrology Institute (DFM), which is developing a new material that will host deterministically placed InAs quantum dots, grown in-situ withstencils. Sparrow will then develop fabrication techniques to make and characterise single-photon source devices based on this groundbreaking new deterministic quantum dot material.
“The adoption of groundbreaking new quantum technology, like quantum sensors and single-photon sources, will support advances across numerous industries and research fields. It’s hard to overstate the potential,” said Sofus Budtz, Characterisation Engineer at Sparrow Quantum. “TheNoQTeS project will be a vital step in ensuring reliability and standardisation of quantum technology in Europe.”
For more information, please visit the official NoQTeS webpage.
Full project name: “Normating colour-centre-based quantum sensing technology towards industrial application and standards”
Start date: 1 June 2024
Duration: 3 years
Budget: €1.27 million
