Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have succeeded in generating intense magnetic fields on the nanoscale by focusing electric current through a nanosized metal constriction. The feat has allowed them to perform magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and spectroscopy at spatial resolutions of just 10 nm using well established nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques such as “Fourier-transform”. Such nanoscale MRI could come in extremely useful for imaging biological organisms and, if improved, the new technique might even be used to image viruses and protein macromolecules in the future. The experiment “Another important result of our research is that we have demonstrated a new magnetic resonance protocol that allows us to apply NMR techniques to encode so-called spin noise,” explained team leader Raffi Budakian. “That is, we encode information in the statistical fluctuations of all the nuclear spins in a sample rather than in their thermal spin polarization – as is usually the case.” “In nanometre-scale volumes, the signal generated by nuclear spin fluctuations is generally much larger than that produced by the thermal spin polarization,” he added. “It is, however, difficult to work with these spin fluctuations because both the sign and magnitude of the signal fluctuate. Our technique provides a

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