Atom Chips: Fabrication and Thermal Properties

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lithographic fabrication process for atom chips with sub-micron features, demonstrating their high current capacity and thermal properties, and identifying silicon as the optimal substrate for such devices.

Contribution

The paper presents a new fabrication method for atom chips with sub-micron resolution and comprehensive thermal testing, highlighting silicon's suitability as a substrate.

Findings

Thin wires can carry over 10^7 A/cm^2 at room temperature.

Wires can withstand voltages exceeding 500V.

Silicon is the most suitable substrate among tested materials.

Abstract

Neutral atoms can be trapped and manipulated with surface mounted microscopic current carrying and charged structures. We present a lithographic fabrication process for such atom chips based on evaporated metal films. The size limit of this process is below 1$\mu$m. At room temperature, thin wires can carry more than 10$^7$A/cm$^2$ current density and voltages of more than 500V. Extensive test measurements for different substrates and metal thicknesses (up to 5 $\mu$m) are compared to models for the heating characteristics of the microscopic wires. Among the materials tested, we find that Si is the best suited substrate for atom chips.