Nanoscale magnetic imaging enabled by nitrogen vacancy centres in nanodiamonds labelled by iron–oxide nanoparticles

Abstract

Nanodiamonds containing the nitrogen vacancy centre (NV) have a significant role in biosensing, bioimaging, drug delivery, and as biomarkers in fluorescence imaging, due to their photo-stability and biocompatibility. The optical read out of the NV unpaired electron spin has been used in diamond magnetometry to image living cells and magnetically labelled cells. Diamond magnetometry is mostly based on the use of bulk diamond with a large concentration of NV centres in a wide field fluorescence microscope equipped with microwave excitation. It is possible to correlate the fluorescence maps with the magnetic field maps of magnetically labelled cells with diffraction limit resolution. Nanodiamonds have not as yet been implemented to image magnetic fields within complex biological systems at the nanometre scale. Here we demonstrate the suitability of nanodiamonds to correlate the fluorescence map with the magnetic imaging map of magnetically labelled cells. Nanoscale optical images with 17 nm resolution of nanodiamonds labelling fixed cells bound to iron oxide magnetic nanoparticles are demonstrated by using a single molecule localisation microscope. Nanoscale magnetic field images of the magnetised magnetic nanoparticles spatially assigned to individual cells are superresolved by the NV centres within nanodiamonds conjugated with the magnetic nanoparticles with 20 nm resolutions. Our method offers a new platform for the super-resolution of optical magnetic imaging in biological samples conjugated with nanodiamonds and iron–oxide magnetic nanoparticles.