Manchester researchers place single atoms with 20 nanometre precision

[WWEPete45]

Researchers at the University of Manchester, working with Imperial College London and the University of Leeds, have shown they can implant individual atoms into materials with 20 nanometre accuracy. The work comes from a platform called P-NAME, short for Platform for Nanoscale Advanced Materials Engineering. They checked where the atoms ended up using nanoSIMS, a technique that can confirm atomic locations at very fine resolution. A custom cryogenic near field microscope also let them characterise the materials at 30 nanometre length scales

It is part of a £12.6 million programme called Materials Engineering for Advanced Devices, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Professor Richard Curry leads the work with colleagues including Dr Jayadev Vijayan and Jessie Boland. Curry made the point that being able to check materials at the atomic scale and feed that back into engineering is what separates informed development from guesswork

Why does placing atoms matter so much? Many quantum devices depend on individual atoms sitting in exactly the right place inside a material, acting as qubits or sensors. If you cannot put them where you want, or cannot confirm where they went, building reliable devices at scale becomes almost impossible. Precise placement is one of the bottlenecks between lab demonstrations and real products

The list of possible applications is long. It includes quantum sensors that could find buried pipes and underground cavities without digging, secure communications that are resistant to eavesdropping and better quantum computing hardware. The team also mentions producing ultra pure silicon, which improves how reliable quantum devices are. Drug discovery and materials simulation get a mention too, though those depend on quantum computers getting much bigger

It is good to see UK research in this space getting attention. We have strong universities in quantum technology, but turning that into companies has been the hard part. Do you think the UK can build a real quantum industry, or will the best work keep getting bought up by overseas firms?

Atoms Placed With 20-nanometre Precision-Mead Drives New Quantum Techquantumzeitgeist.com