LONDON — Researchers at the University of Southampton and Imperial College, London are set to make atom chip devices following a further grant of £1.2 million to extend their work on the devices that they say could bring quantum computing nearer to reality.

The grant , under the basic technology translation scheme, comes from the U.K.'s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The project is led by Dr Michael Kraft at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS) and Professor Edward Hinds at Imperial College, London.

Their task is to take the toolbox of basic atom chip building blocks which they have developed and integrate them on to a single chip so that they can be developed into systems robust enough to perform useful functions.

The researchers say the work, which begins this month for a four-year period, is a natural sequel to the Basic Technology Atom Chips project, on which Dr Kraft and Professor Hinds and their teams have collaborated for the past four years.

The team has already ascertained that atom chips have potential uses in a variety of technologies. For example: sensors with unprecedented accuracy and sensitivity; quantum computing, and atom interferometers, instruments that exploit the wave characters of atoms.

The next stage of the research will also focus on the potential application of atom chip devices in atomic clocks, accelerometers, interferometers, magnetometers, single photon sources, quantum information processors and molecule traps.

"Over the past four years, we have done the fundamental research into atom chips," said Dr Kraft. "Now it is time to make application-orientated devices."

Dr Kraft acknowledged that other international research groups have already worked on atom chips and continue to do so, but he says there are not yet any atom chip devices.

"There is a growing need for unprecedented accuracy in accelerometers and gyroscopes," he said. "Quantum information processors are potentially leading to quantum computers and atom chip devices will facilitate this process."