Microtrap Fabrication Technology for
Trapped Ion Quantum Information Science

MICROTRAP is a Strep project developing an EU technology capability in trapped ion micro-structures for application to quantum information science. The technology development within the project is entirely new. The outputs to date represent a major step forward in integrating QIP into micro-electronics technology, bridging the gap between large, complex laboratory demonstrations and viable microtrap chips. These outputs include:

Microtrap design and fabrication:

The Microtrap consortium has designed and investigated three different fabrication technologies for segmented electrode designs:

• Gold-coated ceramic wafer 3D layered traps
• 2D planar surface traps
• 3D monolithic gold-coated silica-on-silicon traps

Ceramic wafer micro-traps

• Developed by University of Ulm
• 3 layers, each with wafer thickness of 125 µm
• Trap profile for each wafer layer fabricated by femtosecond laser machining
• Top and bottom layers, evaporatively coated with gold to few 100 nm thickness then electroplated to few µm thickness, then laser machined further for track cutting
• Bottleneck and cross-shape microtrap designs
• Microtrap chip mounted on industry-standard chip holder

Implementation of a symmetric surface electrode ion trap with field compensation using a modulated Raman effect
D. T. C. Allcock, J. A. Sherman, M. J. Curtis, G. Imreh, A. H. Burrell, D. J. Szwer, D. N. Stacey, A. M. Steane and D. M. Lucas, arXiv:0909.3272v1 (2009).

Au-coated Silica-on-silicon wafer traps

Monolithic microfabricated ion trap chip design for scaleable quantum processors
M Brownnutt, G Wilpers, P Gill, R C Thompson and A G Sinclair (2006) N. J Phys 8 232-50