SBIR Phase II: Chip-Scale Optical Frequency Standards

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）二期项目使用国家计量机构采用的最先进的光学频率计量技术，生产紧凑型光学频率标准。商业上，这些设备将以激光的形式产生基本准确和稳定的光频率。这些光学频率标准的最终用途包括电信测试设备，航空航天传感器，半导体检查工具和化学测量工具。市场趋势是生产更紧凑、可批量生产的设备，以提高各行业的传感能力。提高紧凑型光子技术的精度和稳定性将使下一代微电子和光子系统能够在不牺牲耐用性或灵敏度的情况下产生可靠的测量结果。由此产生的产品价格低廉，可用于规模化生产。将这些产品提供给科学技术社区将使研究人员和工程师能够根据国际单位制（SI）秒的定义构建本质上精确的产品。该产品将在原子钟市场竞争，该市场价值3亿美元，并以每年6.25%的速度增长。这一努力有可能扭转计时设备价格蠕变的持续问题，该问题目前阻碍了量子标准的大规模采用。这个项目的智力优势是利用先进的微加工技术，结合基本的分子和光学物理学来生产紧凑、稳定和精确的光学频率标准。测量科学需要测量参考文献和标准的分布和可用性。光学频率标准服务于各种需要精确测量光的小众应用。本研究将利用新材料提高芯片级碘蒸气电池的纯度，并对第一阶段性能期间发明的材料进行充分研究。这些蒸汽电池将是国际公认的标准协议所同意的SI秒的实际实现。该项目的核心技术创新将集中于生产一个“物理封装”，其中包含一个芯片级的碘蒸气电池，具有控制蒸气压的电气功能，用于实现高分辨率光谱的激光路由，以及一个将各种传感器输入转换为精确和准确测量分子跃迁的软件接口。该团队将利用光学时钟的趋势，证明了软件定义算法在物理包的询问、合成和学科中的效用，以对抗环境和测量相关的干扰，最终产生稳定和精确的设备。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project produces compact optical frequency standards using state-of-the-art optical frequency metrology techniques adopted from national metrology institutes. Commercially, these devices will produce fundamentally accurate and stable optical frequencies in the form of laser light. End uses of these optical frequency standards include telecommunications test equipment, aerospace sensors, semiconductor inspection tools, and chemical measurement tools. The market trend is to produce more compact, mass-producible devices to improve sensing capabilities across industries. Improving the accuracy and stability of compact photonics technologies will enable next-generation microelectronics and photonic systems to produce reliable measurements without sacrificing durability or sensitivity. The resulting products will be inexpensive and will lend themselves to scalable manufacturing. Making these products accessible to the scientific and technology communities will enable researchers and engineers to build intrinsically accurate products based on definitions of the International System of Units (SI) second. This product will compete within the Atomic Clock Marketplace which is valued at $300 million, and which is growing at 6.25% per year. This effort has the potential to reverse the ongoing problem of price-creep of timekeeping devices that is currently preventing the large-scale adoption of quantum standards.The intellectual merit of this project is to use advances in microfabrication techniques combined with fundamental molecular and optical physics to produce compact, stable, and accurate optical frequency standards. Measurement science requires the distribution and availability of measurement references and standards. Optical frequency standards serve a variety of niche applications requiring accurate measurements with light. This research will improve the purity of chip-scale iodine vapor cells using novel materials and also fully investigate the materials invented during the Phase I period of performance. These vapor cells will be practical realizations of the SI second as agreed upon by internationally accepted standards protocols. The core technical innovation in this project will focus on producing a ‘physics package’ containing a chip-scale iodine vapor cell with electrical functionality for controlling the vapor pressure, laser light routing for implementing high-resolution spectroscopy, and a software interface that converts the various sensor inputs into a precise and accurate measurement of a molecular transition. The team will leverage trends in optical clocks that have proved the utility of software-defined algorithms in the interrogation, synthesis, and discipline of physics packages to counter environmental and measurement-related disturbances ultimately producing a stable and accurate device.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.