University of Basel physicists has successfully cooled a nanoelectronic chip to a temperature lower than 3 millikelvin. The scientists from the Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute set this record in collaboration with other physicists from Germany and Finland. The team used magnetic cooling to cool the electrical connections, as well as the chips itself.
There have been numerous working groups around the world using high-tech refrigerators to attempt to reach temperatures that are as close to absolute zero as possible. Physicists want to reach absolute zero because the extremely low temperatures are the ideal conditions for quantum experiments and allow entirely new physical phenomena to be examined.
[...] This is how [Basel physics professor Dominik] Zumbühl's team succeeded in cooling a nanoelectronic chip to a temperature below 2.0 millikelvin, a low-temperature record. Dr. Marioi Palma, lead author of the study, and his colleague, Christian Scheller, have successfully used a combination of two cooling systems that were both based on magnetic cooling. They cooled all of the chip's electrical connections to temperatures of 150 microkelvin. This is a temperature less than a thousandth of a degree away from absolute zero.
The researchers then integrated a second cooling system directly onto the chip and placed a Coulomb blockade thermometer on it. This construction and material consumption allowed the team to cool the thermometer to a temperature near absolute zero.
"The combination of cooling systems allowed us to cool our chip down to below 3 millikelvin, and we are optimistic that we can use the same method to reach the magic 1 millikelvin limit," says Zumbühl.
What's even more amazing is that they can maintain this temperature for around 7 hours.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:51PM (1 child)
Aaaayyyyy, nice job!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @11:14PM
For those too young to get the cultural reference: "The Fonz" [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:14PM
I'd rather listen to Hot Chip.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:36PM (1 child)
They want to reach it, but as the sentence before hints at, you can only reach as close to absolute zero as possible - absolute zero is not possible to achieve. (Unless my understanding of physics is deficient and it may be.) It's interesting to know that the record is under 2 mK and they want to reach 1 uK. (No, ain't gonna try to insert a mu, sorry!)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:39PM
Oh, mistaken. Have to reread the article for precisely what they met.... they want the chip in the 1mK limit, not microKelvin range, though the electrical connections were 150 microKelvin. My bad. Fascinating stuff, still.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Thursday December 28 2017, @12:21AM
Can it run Linux?
(Score: 2) by dak664 on Thursday December 28 2017, @02:11PM
Since below zero K is routinely achieved. But (correctly) they only want to reach the coldest possible temperature of zero K. See e.g. http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/action/negative-temperature.cfm [physicscentral.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 28 2017, @05:26PM
ah so. now i know why i have milli-second blackouts. strangely enough i can still remember them...