Abstract
Additive manufacturing is having a dramatic impact on research and industry across multiple sectors, but the production of additively manufactured systems for ultra-high vacuum applications has so far proved elusive and widely been considered impossible. We demonstrate the first additively manufactured vacuum chamber operating at a pressure below 10−10 mbar, measured via an ion pump current reading, and show that the corresponding upper limit on the total gas output of the additively manufactured material is 3.6 × 10−13 mbar l/(s mm2). The chamber is produced from AlSi10Mg by laser powder bed fusion. Detailed surface analysis reveals that an oxidised, Mg-rich surface layer forms on the additively manufactured material and plays a key role in enabling vacuum compatibility. Our results not only enable lightweight, compact versions of existing systems, but also facilitate rapid prototyping and unlock hitherto inaccessible options in experimental science by removing the constraints that traditional manufacturing considerations impose on component design. This is particularly relevant to the burgeoning field of portable quantum sensors — a point that we illustrate by using the chamber to create a magneto-optical trap for cold 85Rb atoms — and will impact significantly on all application areas of high and ultra-high vacuum.
Highlights
We demonstrate that additive manufacturing (AM) is suitable for the production of ultra-high vacuum (UHV) equipment, opening up opportunities for rapid prototyping, weight reduction and enhanced functionality across the high and ultra-high vacuum sectors
Applications of UHV systems are numerous, ranging from established technologies such as photosensors, cameras, cryostats, electron micro scopes and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyzers to impor tant emerging research areas such as portable quantum sensors based on cold atoms [1,2,3,4]
The chamber we demonstrate represents a significant increase in size and complexity over previous AM UHV components - an essential step to wards the exploitation of the benefits of AM within the UHV sector
Summary
We demonstrate that additive manufacturing (AM) is suitable for the production of ultra-high vacuum (UHV) equipment, opening up opportunities for rapid prototyping, weight reduction and enhanced functionality across the high and ultra-high vacuum sectors. Rough surfaces are associated with increased outgassing rates, porosity [12,13] can create leaks or virtual leaks from trapped gas-pockets and limited hardness [10] reduces the effectiveness of traditional knife-edge seals at vacuum connections. These characteristics of AM metals have led to legitimate doubts as to their suitability for the production of UHV components. We demonstrate the compatibility of our chamber with industry-standard components and sealing techniques, a detail that has been absent from most previous work
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