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Characterization of Two Fast-Turnaround Dry Dilution Refrigerators for Scanning Probe Microscopy

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Abstract

Low-temperature scanning probe microscopes (SPMs) are critical for the study of quantum materials and quantum information science. Due to the rising costs of helium, cryogen-free cryostats have become increasingly desirable. However, they typically suffer from comparatively worse vibrations than cryogen-based systems, necessitating the understanding and mitigation of vibrations for SPM applications. Here we demonstrate the construction of two cryogen-free dilution refrigerator SPMs with minimal modifications to the factory default and we systematically characterize their vibrational performance. We measure the absolute vibrations at the microscope stage with geophones and use both microwave impedance microscopy and a scanning single-electron transistor to independently measure tip-sample vibrations. Additionally, we implement customized filtering and thermal anchoring schemes and characterize the cooling power at the scanning stage and the tip electron temperature. This work serves as a reference to researchers interested in cryogen-free SPMs, as such characterization is not standardized in the literature or available from manufacturers.

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Data availability

The data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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The code that support these findings are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work was supported by the QSQM, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences (BES), under Award # DE-SC0021238. JCH acknowledges support from the Stanford Q-FARM Quantum Science and Engineering Fellowship. Z. Ji is supported by the Stanford Science Fellowship and the Urbanek-Chodorow postdoctoral fellowship awards. Z. Jiang is partially supported by the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST) Postdoctoral Fellowship. Part of this work was performed at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities (SNSF), supported by the National Science Foundation under award ECCS-2026822.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    Mark E. Barber, Yifan Li, Jiachen Yu, Yuwen Hu, Nabhanila Nandi, Jesse C. Hoke, Logan Bishop-Van Horn, Kathryn A. Moler, Zhi-Xun Shen & Benjamin E. Feldman

  2. Department of Applied Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Mark E. Barber, Jiachen Yu, Zhurun Ji, Kathryn A. Moler & Zhi-Xun Shen

  3. Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Mark E. Barber, Yifan Li, Yuwen Hu, Zhurun Ji, Nabhanila Nandi, Jesse C. Hoke, Logan Bishop-Van Horn, Kathryn A. Moler, Zhi-Xun Shen & Benjamin E. Feldman

  4. Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Mark E. Barber, Yifan Li, Jiachen Yu, Yuwen Hu, Zhurun Ji, Nabhanila Nandi, Jesse C. Hoke, Logan Bishop-Van Horn, Kathryn A. Moler, Zhi-Xun Shen & Benjamin E. Feldman

  5. Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Jared Gibson, Zhanzhi Jiang, Gilbert R. Arias, Dale J. Van Harlingen & Angela Kou

  6. Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Jared Gibson, Zhanzhi Jiang, Gilbert R. Arias, Dale J. Van Harlingen & Angela Kou

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  1. Mark E. Barber
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  2. Yifan Li
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Contributions

MEB, JY, and YL helped design and install the DR and microscope at SLAC, and JG and GRA led design and installation at UIUC. MEB, Z. Jiang, and JG conducted the geophone measurements. YL, JY, MEB, and YH conducted the scanning SET measurements. MEB conducted the MIM measurements. MEB and YL designed and tested the filtering. YL and JCH designed and fabricated test samples. BEF, AK, Z-XS, KAM, DJVH supervised the work. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mark E. Barber or Benjamin E. Feldman.

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Conflict of interest

Z.-X.S. is a co-founder of PrimeNano Inc., which licensed the microwave impedance microscopy technology from Stanford University for commercial instruments. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.

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Barber, M.E., Li, Y., Gibson, J. et al. Characterization of Two Fast-Turnaround Dry Dilution Refrigerators for Scanning Probe Microscopy. J Low Temp Phys 215, 1–23 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-023-03035-4

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