Less than the width of a human hair: have the Photon Science Institute created the world’s smallest pumpkin?
Research impact and institutes 31st October 2023
It’s a crisp autumn morning. There’s a chill in the air and the crunch of leaves underfoot, Manchester is adorned with a kaleidoscope of vibrant crimson and orange hues. In the spirit of Halloween, our friends over at the Photon Science Institute have honoured the holiday in the best way they know how: using a focused ion beam to create a teeny, tiny pumpkin.
The creation originates from research conducted in the EPSRC Programme Grant Nanoscale Advanced Materials Engineering. In collaboration with Imperial College London, the team’s work, led by Principal Investigator, Richard Curry, uses novel alloys which are heated up before an electric field is applied to exact ions from the tip. From here, they can be separated so there’s only one type of ion coming down the column. They can even distinguish ions of the same element that have different masses, called isotopes. Electrostatic lenses are then used to focus the beam down to lower than 10nm.
This technology is paving the way toward the quantum computers of the future which will revolutionise science and innovation. Quantum computers can be used to model how a protein folds for drug discovery and is already being used in cyber-cryptography to increase network security.
Creating the smallest pumpkin
You may be thinking: but how on earth do they create something so small – like the pumpkin? By having an exceedingly small beam, precise control over where the ions are put and control over the ion itself, the team can manage the composition and properties of new materials on the nanoscale. This advanced materials engineering allows for doping of ions in incredibly small areas, even down to the single ion.
The pumpkin was created by moving the beam over the surface of the semiconductor and imaging with electrons. What you can see is actually the damage created by the beam smashing into the surface. The pumpkin measures 40 μm – smaller than the width of a human hair.
Maddison Coke is an Experimental Officer at the University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute, and a Senior Technical Specialist for Nanoscale Advanced Materials Engineering (PNAME). She and Mason Adshead (PDRA) are the duo behind aligning the beam and implanting the ions needed to create the pumpkin.
“We normally use this design making software to make markers such as crosses or numbers,” Maddison explains, “but we do sometimes have time at the end of the day to implant more intricacy to demonstrate the control of the beam in more complicated designs.”
Maddison is mainly lab based, where she is involved with the operation and optimisation of the system. She continues, “As this system is the only one of its kind, we are pushing it to its limit, seeing how small we can get the beam, making sure we can detect when single ions are implanted and looking at reproducibility of the beam control.”
For more information, Maddison simplifies their research paper ‘A High-Resolution Versatile Focused Ion Implantation Platform for Nanoscale Engineering’ on her website.
Discover more about the trailblazing science and engineering labs at the University of Manchester in our Tomorrow Labs, including the Centre for Quantum Science and Engineering.
