Spring Experimental Weeks of CRC 1261 at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Berlin

The Collaborative Research Center 1261 successfully concludes its series of experimental stays at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Department 8.2 (Biosignals) in Berlin. The two weeks, spanning from April 22 to May 4, 2024, were marked by the use of PTB's exceptional facilities, such as the Berlin Magnetically Shielded Room 2.1 (BMSR-2.1), which provided an ideal environment for conducting magnetic experiments under reproducible laboratory conditions.

The experimental team of the CRC 1261, this time consisting of PhD students Johan Arbustini (Project B1), Giuseppe Barbieri (Project A8), and Eric Elzenheimer as a postdoc (Project Z2), performed several experiments. One focus was on invention and approval of an evaluation strategy for magnetometers, where the department "Metrology of Ultra-Low Magnetic Fields" with Jens Voigt (Group leader) and Silvia Knappe-Grüneberg and Eric Elzenheimer are working closely together. Besides the evaluation of our ME sensors, one novel multichannel MEG system (24 channels, single axis, closed loop) based on Optically Pumped Magnetometers (OPMs) has been accessed. Furthermore, the characterization of functionalized magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) was carried out in the department "Metrology for Magnetic Nanoparticles" under the leadership of Frank Wiekhorst and with the help of Patricia Radon. In particular, using magnetorelaxometry devices and susceptibility measuring devices, the dynamic characteristics of our functionalized MNP was investigated. This analysis provides the basis for using our ME sensors in a potential new application project.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all members of the Department 8.2 at PTB. Your efforts and expertise were instrumental in the successful progress and smooth execution of all the planned experiments. We look forward to the next rework phase, which involves the detailed evaluation and cooperative analysis of the recorded data from the experiments. The outcomes we are confident are interesting to the whole scientific magnetic sensing community. We are excited to continue the experimental work next autumn.

The experimental visiting team before the impressive BMSR-2.1 building, with an inner core area of 3m x 3m x 3m.		The team, right to left, consists of Silvia Knappe-Grüneberg (PTB), Eric Elzenheimer (Z2), Johan Arbustini (B1), and Giuseppe Barbieri (A8).