Wafer-scale micro-knife sealed vacuum cells for quantum devices
Megan Kelleher, Konrad Ziegler, Jeremy Robin +10 more
Abstract Advanced integration technologies greatly enhance the prospects and reliability of practical quantum sensors, atomic clocks, and quantum information technologies. The performance and proliferation of these devices at chip scale is contingent upon developing low leak and low gas permeation vacuum cells using wafer-scale techniques. Here, we demonstrate a novel, low-leak-rate micro-knife bonding approach, enabling the realization of both atomic vapor cells and more complex evacuated atomic beam devices. These devices are fabricated using selective laser etching in a fused silica platform. The vapor cells are mechanically robust exhibiting shear-force strength ∼ 15 MPa, demonstrate long lifetimes ( > 1 year), low residual gas pressures ( ≪ 10 − 3 mbar ) , and leak rates below fine-leak testing sensitivity ( ≪ 2.8 × 10 − 10 mbar ⋅ l s − 1 ). Micro-knife bonding greatly simplifies the fabrication process for complex chip scale atom-beam devices and atomic vapor cells while identifying a path to future chip-scale cold atom devices, improved chip scale atomic clocks, and fieldable dissipation-dilution-limited optomechanics.
Quantum Science and Technology•Jul 16, 2026•1 citation