Objective
"It is an unfortunate truth that the current electronics is facing a brick wall in a decade or so when Moore's law has finally run its course and no further miniaturization is possible. We need something new. Coherent electron circuitry may provide that entirely new alternative. In nanocircuits the electrons can behave coherently over the circuit dimension and thus follow the rules of wave motion rather than Ohm's law. To achieve coherence, however, electron scattering lengths must be larger than the sample size. That demands high purity to limit impurity scattering, but even limiting thermal scattering, by working at millikelvin temperature, we are still confined to circuits on the nanoscale. This provides the motivation for this application: there is an implicit imperative in nanoscience that there are enormous advantages to be gained at much lower temperatures. Despite the clear demand, nanoscience in general is inhibited from advancing beyond the millikelvin regime by a lack of appropriate expertise and facilities. However, in Europe we already have the greatest concentration of microkelvin infrastructure and espertise in the world, developed by our quantum-fluids community. By integration and rationalization MICROKELVIN aims to put this existing infrastructure at the disposal of the wider community and together develope new techniques and materials to bring corerent structures into the completely new regime. Our ultimate aim is the creation of a virtual European microkelvin ""laboratory without walls"" operating as a single entity. Integration will also allow us to pool our existing expertise and project it outword by greating new stand-alone machines able to access this temperature range anywhere. Such activity will also encourage European commercial interest in this opportunity. This advance is inevitable in the long term, but the European lead in the microkelvin field gives us the opportunity now to be the first with this new development. The infrastructure is there. The need is manifest. We simply have to bring the two together."
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2008-1
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
CP-CSA-Infra - Combination of CP and CSACoordinator
02150 Espoo
Finland