According to Trak.in News, theoretical physicist Jacob Taylor of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) envisions diamond-tipped sensors capable of performing magnetic resonance tests on individual cells in the body or on single molecules – a MRI scanner for the microscopic.

The scientists’ finding that a candidate ‘quantum bit’ possesses great sensitivity to magnetic fields indicates that the development of MRI-like devices to probe individual drug molecules and living cells may be possible.

According to the NIST, the candidate system, which is formed from a nitrogen atom lodged within a diamond crystal, appears to be promising not only because it can sense atomic-scale variations in magnetism, but also because it functions at room temperature.

The diamond occasionally has minute imperfections inside its crystalline structure. A common such impurity is a ‘nitrogen vacancy,’ where two carbon atoms are replaced by a single atom of nitrogen, leaving the other carbon atom’s space empty.

Nitrogen vacancies contribute to the diamond’s luster, but they are actually fluorescent: When green light strikes them, the nitrogen atom’s two excitable unpaired electrons glow a brilliant red.

Slight variations in this fluorescence can be used to determine the magnetic spin of a single electron in the nitrogen. Spin is a quantum property that has a value of either ‘up’ or ‘down,’ and can therefore represent one or zero in binary computation.

The NIST explains that reading a quantum bit’s spin information – a fundamental task for a quantum computer - has been a challenge but the team demonstrated that by transferring the information back and forth between the electron and the nuclei, the former can be amplified, making it much easier to read.