The researchers — who are based at the University of Stuttgart and various companies in Germany — attached a diamond plate containing the NV centres to the area of the circuit to be studied, and then placed the entire setup in a wide-field fluorescence microscope, with a field of view of around 90 μm × 90 μm. The magnetic fields generated by currents affect the spins of the NV centres, which are measured using optically detected magnetic resonance. The method can detect currents as weak as 10 μA μm⁻² with sub-micrometre spatial resolution and was tested on two chips used in millimetre-wave radar applications, where one was functional and the other defective. Although the two chips look identical using light microscopy, the NV-based current imaging could identify the failure in the defective chip and locate which layer it was in.

Original reference: Phys. Rev. Appl. 21, 014055 (2024)

斯图加特大学和德国多家公司的研究人员将一块包含 NV 中心的金刚石板附着到要研究的电路区域，然后将整个装置放置在宽视场荧光显微镜中，视野约为 90 μm × 90 μm。电流产生的磁场会影响 NV 中心的自旋，这是使用光学检测的磁共振来测量的。该方法可以以亚微米空间分辨率检测弱至 10 μA μm ^-2的电流，并在毫米波雷达应用中使用的两块芯片上进行了测试，其中一块正常工作，另一块有缺陷。尽管在光学显微镜下这两个芯片看起来完全相同，但基于 NV 的电流成像可以识别有缺陷芯片中的故障并定位它所在的层。

原始参考： Phys. 修订版应用程序。 21 , 014055 (2024)