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

[HardyBoy13]

£12.6 million is not a lot for work of this importance. Compare that with what the US and China are spending on quantum each year. Good results for the money though

[Vector]

Is this ready to be used in manufacturing, or still very much a lab technique? Implanting atoms one at a time sounds slow. Scaling up to millions of devices would need a much faster process. Perhaps that is the next stage of the programme

[DarkEnergy]

Manchester has a proud history with materials science, graphene being the obvious example. Nice to see that tradition continuing

It would be good if this one led to more local jobs than graphene did. The commercial side of that story has been a bit disappointing

[Stag]

Twenty nanometres is incredibly precise when you think about it. A human hair is roughly 80,000 nanometres wide. Putting a single atom within 20 nanometres of where you want it is remarkable engineering. The verification step is what impresses me most, because checking your work at that scale is just as hard as doing it

Without confirmation, you are just hoping. This removes the guesswork

[Fan]

Finding buried pipes without digging would save councils and utility companies a fortune. Every road dig that hits the wrong thing costs time and money

[KingGeorge26]

The UK always seems to lead on research and then lose the commercial side. ARM is probably the best example of that pattern. Great British invention, now owned elsewhere

Quantum could go the same way unless there is serious long term investment. Start ups need patient money, not just grants. The US and China will happily buy anything promising

[Sharon_42]

Ultra pure silicon is an underrated part of this. Impurities are one of the biggest sources of noise in silicon based qubits. If you can control both the purity of the material and where the useful atoms go, you tackle two problems at once. That could make silicon a serious contender against other qubit types. It also fits with existing chip manufacturing, which is a huge advantage