CNRS and Thales teams involved in Josephine are working in the same research facility: the Laboratoire Albert Fert. It is a joint research lab whose main legal bodies are the CNRS and Thales, and since 2021 the Université Paris-Saclay as a secondary legal body. It is located on the Thales Research and Technology site in Palaiseau, France. The Laboratoire Albert Fert’s research focuses on various areas of condensed matter physics, i.e. spintronics, oxytronics, superconductivity and, more recently, neuromorphic physics, in which the laboratory is at the forefront in France and internationally. This fundamental research is also aimed at developing applications and stimulating innovation in information and communication technologies, unconventional approaches to computing and beyond CMOS logic, and quantum technologies.

Learn more about the lab: https://laboratoire-albert-fert.cnrs-thales.fr/en/research-topics/superconductivity/

The laboratory has five reactors equipped with Nd-YAG solid-state lasers or KrF excimer lasers. These reactors enable a wide range of materials to be explored, including dielectric, ferroelectric, magnetic and superconducting oxides, as well as two-dimensional van der Waals materials. Three of these reactors are connected in-situ and coupled to two sputtering chambers for the elaboration of oxide/metal heterostructures. In-situ characterization facilities (RHEED, LEED, XPS, UPS) are connected to the growth chambers.

In mid-2019, the laboratory acquired the first version of a UV projection lithography instrument (contactless, in other words) from the French start-up SmartForce, the Smart Print. The principle is simple: a modified projector (the projection lens is replaced by a microscope lens) projects “fullHD” (blue) images of photolithographic masks onto a surface area of a few mm² (depending on the lens chosen). When the pattern exceeds the size of a field, the machine can connect various fields, albeit with limitations in terms of the precision of the connections (1-2 µm). Given the enormous success of the machine, a second has been acquired (delivered in March 2022), the SP-UV Microlight3D with a better sample platform (improving the accuracy of field splices (< 200 nm), and using a more powerful UV diode source and enabling resins sensitive to the i, h and g lines to be exposed. The “real” lateral resolution is 1 to 2 µm depending on the geometry.

Our laboratory is equipped with a Raith PIONEER Two: an electron beam lithography (EBL) system integrated with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with a maximum accelerating voltage of 30 kV. It is also equipped with a very high-precision laser interferometer-controlled stage and backscattered in-lens secondary electron detectors (AsB).

Our laboratory has a PLASSYS MU600S ion etching system. It operates with Ar ions accelerated between 200 and 700 eV for samples up to 4 inches in diameter with a planetary substrate holder, tilted (0-90°) and cooled (> 2°C). Thanks to the associated mass spectroscopy (SIMS, Hidden Analytical), it is possible to stop etching in specific layers as thin as a few nm. The presence of an in-situ sputtering gun enables a layer to be deposited on the freshly etched area.

The study of the electronic properties of spintronic, superconducting, functional oxide or neuromorphic devices is at the heart of the laboratory’s research activities. The laboratory has about twenty (magneto)-transport benches enabling DC and RF transport measurements (up to a few hundred gigahertz). Some of this equipment is equipped with cryostats for temperature measurements (from 30 mK to 400 K) and/or for applying magnetic fields of up to 9 Teslas.

The laboratory is equipped with two magnetometers (SQUID MPMS XL and AGFM) to measure magnetization as a function of temperature (from 5 K to 400 K) and magnetic field up to 5.5 Teslas. Three magneto-optical measurement benches equipped with magnetic fields have been developed for imaging magnetic textures.