Exploiting complex 3D-printed surface structures for portable quantum technologies

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that 3D-printed surface patterns significantly enhance gas pumping efficiency in portable quantum devices, enabling lighter, more integrated vacuum components with improved performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method of surface patterning on 3D-printed vacuum parts to increase gas collision rates and pumping efficiency, validated by experiments and simulations.

Findings

Patterned surfaces pump gas 3.8 times faster than flat surfaces

Numerical simulations predict up to ten-fold increase in pumping rate

Surface patterning can be integrated into additively manufactured components

Abstract

Portable quantum technologies require robust, lightweight apparatus with superior performance. For techniques dependent upon high-vacuum environments, such as atom interferometers and atomic clocks, 3D-printing enables new avenues to tailor in-vacuum gas propagation dynamics. We demonstrate intricate, fine-scale surface patterning of 3D-printed vacuum components to increase the rate at which gas particles collide with the surface. By applying a non-evaporable getter coating for use as a surface pump, we show that the patterned surface pumps gas particles 3.8 times faster than an equivalent flat areas. These patterns can be directly integrated into additively manufactured components, enabling application in close proximity to key experimental regions and contributing to overall mass-reduction. We develop numerical simulations that show good agreement with this result and predict up to a ten-fold increase in pumping rate, for realistic surface structures. Our work has direct applications in enabling passively-pumped portable quantum technologies, but also establishes 3D-printing as a powerful technique for the creation of optimized surface patterning to provide enhanced control over high-vacuum gas dynamics for a broad range of applications.