---
title: "MIT Develops New Ultrasensitive Magnetic-Field Detector"
description: "The new, ultrasensitive magnetic-field detector is 1,000 times more energy-efficient than its predecessors."
date: "2015-04-08"
modified: "2015-08-13"
authors:
  - name: "Matthew Lincoln"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/justmatt"
url: "https://futurism.com/mit-develops-new-ultrasensitive-magnetic-field-detector"
categories:
  - "Physics"
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "physics"
---

# MIT Develops New Ultrasensitive Magnetic-Field Detector

![Default Futurism featured image](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Futurism-Filler-Image.jpg>)

- This work could lead to miniaturized, battery-powered devices for medical and materials imaging, contraband detection, and geological exploration. Magnetic field detectors are already being used in these areas, bur existing technologies have drawbacks: Some rely on gas-filled chambers; others work only in narrow frequency bands, limiting their utility.
- Synthetic diamonds with nitrogen vacancies (NVs) — defects that are extremely sensitive to magnetic fields — have long held promise as the basis for efficient, portable magnetometers. A diamond chip about one-twentieth the size of a thumbnail could contain trillions of nitrogen vacancies, each capable of performing its own magnetic-field measurement.
- In the past, the problem has been aggregating all those measurements. Probing a nitrogen vacancy requires zapping it with laser light, which it absorbs and re-emits. The intensity of the emitted light carries information about the vacancy’s magnetic state.