Sensitive surface loop-gap microresonators for electron spin resonance

Abstract

This work presents the design, construction, and experimental testing of unique sensitive surface loop-gap microresonators for electron spin resonance (ESR) measurements. These resonators are made of "U"-shaped gold structures with typical sizes of 50 and 150 μm that are deposited on a thin (220 μm) rutile substrate and fed from the rear by a microstrip line. This allows accommodating a large flat sample above the resonator in addition to having variable coupling properties. Such resonators have a very small volume which, compared to previous designs, improves their absolute spin sensitivity by a factor of more than 2 (based on experimental results). They also have a very high microwave field-power conversion ratio of up to 86 gauss/√Hz. This could facilitate the use of very short excitation pulses with relatively low microwave power. Following the presentation and the discussion of the experimental results, ways to further increase sensitivity significantly are outlined.