Quano Technologies facilitates nanopositioning with ultra-low energy dissipation at millikelvin temperatures

Nanopositioning stages are a key technology in quantum science and technology. The operation of various qubit platforms and devices, and the study of novel quantum states often requires a cryogenic environment with temperatures on the order of 100 mK or below. Dilution refrigerators used to achieve such low temperatures are commonly characterised by a comparably low cooling power on the order of few hundred microwatts at a temperature of 100 mK (and even much less at lower temperatures). This contrasts with the heat dissipation of commercially nanopositioning stages on the order of milliwatts caused by friction of the stick-slip drive and the electric charging of the piezoelectric actuators. Hence, the operation of nanopositioning stages in dilution refrigerators can lead to substantial temperature increases of the cryostat. This causes long thermalisation times and thermal drifts, which interferes with and can even prevent achieving the desired goals.

At Quano Technologies, we have overcome this challenge by purposefully designing our nanopositioning stages, the stick-slip drive, and the motion interfaces to be equipped with minimum dissipation characteristics. To demonstrate the low-temperature performance of our stages, we have conducted careful tests at millikelvin temperatures. To this end, we have anchored our Quano.X horizontal nanopositioning stage to the mixing chamber level of a CF-CS110 dry dilution cryostat from Leiden Cryogenics, which has a cooling power of 700 µW at 100 mK. The base temperature for this test, as measured at the mixing chamber (MXC) plate, was 16.05 mK. We have tested the effect of operating the Quano.X stage under a continuously applied voltage drive VD on the MXC temperature. We applied a drive frequency of f=500 Hz, that is, the positioning stage, will perform N=500 steps/s. The evolution of the MXC temperature for different drive voltages and step numbers is shown in Figure 1. As can be seen, the continuous drive of the Quano.X stage over a distance of approximately 50 µm (N=1000 steps) within two seconds increases the mixing chamber temperature by less than 30 mK. Choosing smaller activation voltages VD < 100 V can reduce the heating effect even further when a slower motion velocity of the nanopositioning stage can be tolerated. Note that the motion velocity is approximately proportional to the applied voltage drive. 

Therefore, nanopositioning stages of Quano Technologies facilitate applications in which precision positioning over larger distances at millikelvin temperatures is required and long thermalisation times and thermal drift cannot be tolerated. Moreover, our nanopositioning stages facilitate single-step operation at a frequency of f=1 Hz, for example used in scanning probe microscopy applications, without causing a noticeable heating effect. We call this German Quality. Made in Hong Kong. 

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Figure 1: Shown is the evolution of the mixing chamber (MXC) temperature of a Leiden CF-CS110 dry dilution refrigerator as a function of the number of steps of the Quano.X horizontal nanopositioning stage. Different drive voltages VD were applied with a frequency f=500 Hz.