SBIR Phase II: Chip-Scale Optical Frequency Standards

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第二阶段项目使用国家计量机构采用的最先进的光频计量技术生产紧凑型光频标准。在商业上，这些设备将以激光的形式产生基本准确和稳定的光学频率。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、半导体检测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准确性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进行可靠的测量。由此产生的产品将是廉价的，并将有助于自己的规模化制造。使科学和技术界能够获得这些产品将使研究人员和工程师能够根据国际单位制（SI）的定义构建本质上准确的产品。该产品将在价值3亿美元的原子钟市场中竞争，并以每年6.25%的速度增长。这项工作有可能扭转目前阻碍量子标准大规模采用的计时设备价格攀升的问题。该项目的智力价值是利用先进的微制造技术，结合基本的分子和光学物理学，生产紧凑，稳定和准确的光学频率标准。测量科学需要测量参考和标准的分布和可用性。 光学频率标准服务于需要对光进行精确测量的各种利基应用。这项研究将使用新材料提高芯片级碘蒸气电池的纯度，并充分研究在第一阶段性能期间发明的材料。这些蒸气室将是国际公认的标准协议所商定的SI秒的实际实现。该项目的核心技术创新将专注于生产一个“物理包”，其中包含一个芯片级碘蒸气电池，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，以及将各种传感器输入转换为分子跃迁的精确测量的软件接口。该团队将利用光学时钟的趋势，这些趋势已经证明了软件定义算法在物理包的询问，合成和纪律中的实用性，以对抗环境和测量相关的干扰，最终产生稳定和准确的设备。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.