The Governors of the University of Alberta

Published purpose

The ability to precisely place single atoms on a silicon surface to attain exacting engineered properties allows for new and improved standards and sensors. At the University of Alberta and the NRC Nanotechnology Research Centre the Project team have developed atom crafting techniques that are world leading. While other approaches allow only cryogenically stabilized structures to be made, the Project team makes robust, electrically useful devices that stand up to the practical requirements of real-world deployment. The Project will include the deployment of the previously developed techniques to produce testable, exactingly reproducible and practically useable quantum metrology devices. The Project team will make an electrical current standard and a standard thermometer. Both devices allow reference measurements to be made that are - always reliable, calibration-free measurements. These new, useful and marketable devices are extensions of the atom-defined single electron transistor (SET) technology. The SETs the Project team have previously developed are uniquely immune to stray charge effects that plague other SETs and moreover any number of identical SETs with practically no variance of properties can be made allowing for practical manufacture and deployment.