A microfabricated surface-electrode ion trap in silicon

TL;DR

This paper presents a silicon-based microfabricated surface-electrode ion trap using MEMS techniques, demonstrating confinement of ions and potential scalability for quantum computing architectures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel planar silicon ion trap fabricated with MEMS methods, suitable for large-scale quantum information processing.

Findings

Confines laser-cooled 24Mg+ ions approximately 40 microns above the surface

Electrodes are in a single plane beneath the ions

Minimal laser light scattering by electrodes

Abstract

The prospect of building a quantum information processor underlies many recent advances ion trap fabrication techniques. Potentially, a quantum computer could be constructed from a large array of interconnected ion traps. We report on a micrometer-scale ion trap, fabricated from bulk silicon using micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) techniques. The trap geometry is relatively simple in that the electrodes lie in a single plane beneath the ions. In such a trap we confine laser-cooled 24Mg+ ions approximately 40 microns above the surface. The fabrication technique and planar electrode geometry together make this approach amenable to scaling up to large trap arrays. In addition we observe that little laser cooling light is scattered by the electrodes.