Applications of silicon carbide as window materials in atomic cells and atomic devices

TL;DR

This paper explores silicon carbide as a promising window material for atomic cells, offering improved optical, thermal, and mechanical properties over silicon, thus enhancing atomic device performance.

Contribution

It introduces silicon carbide as an alternative material for atomic cells, demonstrating its advantages over silicon in optical, thermal, and mechanical aspects.

Findings

Silicon carbide improves optical access in atomic cells.

Silicon carbide enhances thermal stability of atomic devices.

Silicon carbide provides better mechanical robustness.

Abstract

Atomic cells made by anodically bonding silicon and borosilicate glasses are widely used in atomic devices. One inherent problem in these cells is that the silicon material blocks beams with wavelengths shorter than 1000 nm, which limits available optical accesses when alkali metal atoms are involved. In this work, we investigate the possibility of the silicon carbide material as an alternative of silicon materials in fabricating anodically bonded cells. We demonstrate that the optical, thermal and mechanical properties of silicon carbide help to improve the performance of atomic devices in certain applications.