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EPSRC Fellowships in Manufacturing - "Manufacturing Routes for Organic Room-Temperature MASER"

EPSRC 制造业奖学金 - “有机室温 MASER 的制造路线”

基本信息

批准号：
EP/K037390/1
负责人：
Mark Oxborrow
金额：
$ 140.7万
依托单位：
Imperial College London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Fellowship
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2013 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FK037390%2F1
关键词：
EPSRC Fellowships Manufacturing Routes Organic

项目摘要

The aim of this fellowship is to take a recently reported discovery, namely a solid-state maser capable of operating at room temperature, and to carry out a programme of work based upon it that will enhance "manufacturability" for two key application areas.Background:The MASER, standing for Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, was invented some 60 years ago and exploits paramagnetic transitions in quantum systems to amplify rf/microwave signals. The LASER, which followed directly on from it a few years later, operates through exactly the same physical mechanism (namely stimulated emission) but at much higher frequencies, exploiting electronic transitions to amplify -and so generate- ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. As devices, masers are useful because they can amplify extremely weak (often precious) electromagnetic signals without corrupting them through the addition of random noise, as would otherwise happen if noisier, conventional (semiconductor-based) amplifiers were used.Lasers are now ubiquitous and have found their way into a plethora of applications. Masers, on the other hand, are used only in specialised, performance-critical applications such as atomic clocks or as low-noise amplifiers in the most sensitive radiofrequency telescopes and ground stations. The cause of their relative obscurity to date is that all maser systems offering useful performance have necessarily included pieces of kit that are either bulky or consume substantial amounts of power (often kilowatts), or both. Specifically, conventional solid-state masers, as developed and used by NASA, require both cryogenic temperatures and substantial applied d.c. magnetic fields to work, so in turn requiring bulky, power-consuming refrigerators and magnets. Atomic/molecular masers, though capable of room-temperature operation (after a fashion), still require bulky vacuum chambers and pumps, which are equally hard to miniaturize. The novel type of maser to be developed through this fellowship avoids these limitations: it works in air, at room temperature, in the Earth's ambient magnetic field. It is thus, in principle, vastly more amenable to cost-sensitive, portable applications. How the Fellowship specifically adds value:Preliminary work leading to a proof-of-principle demonstrator has now been published*, but there remain issues that substantially inhibit manufacturability:1 The prototype works only in pulsed mode; continuous (CW) operation is sought though with thermal implications concerning the removal of waste heat.2 Wall-plug power efficiency must to be improved, aiming to get the threshold for CW masing down to a few watts.3 Physical miniaturisation is required for portable applications. Substantial progress on 1, 2 and 3 can be made through engineering solutions alone (as opposed to further "breakthroughs"), whilst being ever mindful of:4 Certain critical components are currently made out of expensive-to-grow single crystals that are equally expensive to form (by skilled hand grinding and polishing) into their required shapes. These build costs need to be extracted.The purpose of the fellowship is to find solutions to all of the above impediments -focussing especially on the last of them 4 and allowing it to regulate the more engineering activities in 1, 2 and 3.* Room temperature solid-state maser, M.O., J. D. Breeze & N. M. Alford, Nature, DOI 10.1038/nature11339, 16th August 2012; see also Aharon Blank's "New and Views" (ibid.): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7411/full/488285a.html

该奖学金的目的是利用最近报道的一项发现，即一种能够在室温下工作的固态脉泽，并在此基础上开展一项工作计划，以增强两个关键应用领域的“可制造性”。背景：脉泽，意思是通过激发辐射发射进行微波放大，发明于大约60年前，利用量子系统中的顺磁跃迁来放大RF/微波信号。几年后，激光通过完全相同的物理机制(即受激发射)工作，但频率要高得多，利用电子跃迁放大--从而产生--紫外线、可见光和红外光。作为设备，脉泽很有用，因为它们可以放大极其微弱的(通常是珍贵的)电磁信号，而不会像使用噪声更大的传统(基于半导体的)放大器所发生的那样，通过添加随机噪声来破坏信号。激光现在无处不在，并已被发现进入了大量的应用领域。另一方面，脉泽仅用于特殊的、性能关键的应用，如原子钟，或用作最敏感的射频望远镜和地面站的低噪声放大器。到目前为止，它们相对默默无闻的原因是，所有提供有用性能的脉泽系统都必须包括体积庞大或消耗大量电力(通常为千瓦)的组件，或者两者兼而有之。具体地说，由NASA开发和使用的传统固态脉泽既需要低温，也需要大量应用的直流。磁场工作，因此反过来需要笨重、耗电的冰箱和磁铁。原子/分子脉泽虽然能够在室温下工作(或多或少)，但仍然需要笨重的真空室和真空泵，这同样很难小型化。通过这项合作开发的新型脉泽避免了这些限制：它在空气中工作，在室温下，在地球周围的磁场中工作。因此，原则上，它对成本敏感的便携应用程序的适应性要强得多。联谊会如何具体增加价值：导致原理证明演示器的初步工作现已公布*，但仍存在严重制约可制造性的问题：1原型只能在脉冲模式下工作；寻求连续(CW)操作，但需要与废热的移除有关的热影响。2壁塞式电源效率必须提高，目标是将CW的阈值降低到几瓦。3便携式应用需要物理上的小型化。仅通过工程解决方案就可以在1、2和3上取得实质性进展(而不是进一步的“突破”)，同时要时刻记住：4某些关键部件目前是由生长成本高昂的单晶制成的，这些单晶(通过熟练的手工研磨和抛光)形成所需形状的成本同样高昂。该奖学金的目的是找到上述所有障碍的解决方案--特别关注其中最后4个障碍，并使其能够在1、2和3中规范更多的工程活动。*室温固态脉泽，M.O.，J.D.Breeze&N.M.Alford，自然，DOI 10.1038/Nature11339,2012年8月16日；另见Aharon Blank的《新观点》(同上)：http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v488/n7411/full/488285a.html

项目成果

期刊论文数量（10）

专著数量（0）

科研奖励数量（0）

会议论文数量（0）

专利数量（0）

Slow noise processes in superconducting resonators

超导谐振器中的慢噪声过程

DOI：
10.1103/physrevb.87.140501
发表时间：
2013
期刊：
Physical Review B
影响因子：
3.7
作者：
Burnett J
通讯作者：
Burnett J

Enhanced magnetic Purcell effect in room-temperature masers.

DOI：
10.1038/ncomms7215
发表时间：
2015-02-20
期刊：
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
影响因子：
16.6
作者：
Breeze, Jonathan;Tan, Ke-Jie;Richards, Benjamin;Sathian, Juna;Oxborrow, Mark;Alford, Neil McN
通讯作者：
Alford, Neil McN

Perspective on room-temperature solid-state masers