Sandia’s Center for Microsystems Science
and Technology is a place where we build some of the smallest things at the nation's largest
national laboratory and we work on scales from the cosmic to the quantum. We build radiation-hardened x-ray cameras
that can snap pictures of environments that you find at the center of the Sun, and we
build chips that can survive radiation bursts from potential adversaries we also make designer
semiconductors that can revolutionize the nation's electric grid and we build devices
that can control the quantum states of individual atoms. I was inspired to come work at Sandia because
of the international reputation at Sandia Labs has for Innovative technology. I was really excited as I got the opportunity
to work at Sandia and further develop micro fabricated ion traps for use in a quantum
processor. I was getting my PhD and I wanted to continue
working in cool technology areas that had importance to the nation. I’d done my graduate work on blue laser
diodes which were a really big breakthrough at the time and Sandia wanted to get into
that field and so they recruited me to come here. When I came for an interview I was so impressed
by the facilities and the people here I thought this would be an awesome place to work and
I've been working here for about 25 years. I kinda got to learn about Sandia while I
was doing my doctoral work and they wanted me to come here and so that's kind of how
it turned out and I've been here ever since. I wanted to work in a place that solved challenging
problems but I also wanted that place to provide opportunities for me to work on different
aspects of integrated circuit design and I found that Sandia checked both of those boxes
for me. So the reason I came to Sandia was it was
an opportunity to do high-end research and actually have a real mission driver to a lot
of the work that we do. The Pascal gyroscope was a collaboration amongst
many team members in the MEMS organization here at Sandia and my role is to produce the
MEMS devices, MEMS is Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, and we have something called the
Summit 5 technology that has been developed in our MEMS group over the last 20 years that
allows us to produce very complex MEMS components and get it right on the very first try. The benefits of building the micro machine
here at Sandia is that we have a very rigorous manufacturing silicon fab. So the micro machine that we use in a navigation
system; many times in a battlefield situation for instance you don't have satellites. However, if you have a very good inertial
navigation system you can still do that the guidance and navigation you need, so this
device does that until this stage was built for DARPA. With these benefits we can give something
to the warfighter that is useful in a very challenging environment. The goal of our group is to build the world’s
best ion traps for use in a quantum computer. We design, fabricate and build micro fabricated
ion traps that are then able to hold many individual ions that can be used to build
a quantum computer. We do a lot of work on what are called wide
and ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors. This is a new class of electronic material
that has certain properties that make it advantageous for power conversion applications. So most of the power electronics are based
on switching. These new materials can switch much faster. That is an advantage for the grid; for example,
there's something called grid inertia. One issue with renewable integration is that
you don't have so much of that inertia, but you can actually mimic that using some of
those fast switching properties of these new devices. I work on a lot of devices that use the same
materials but not power devices. One of the strengths we have at Sandia is
in our compound semiconductor area, so the same materials that we’ve worked to develop
power electronics we’ve worked to develop efficient LEDs for solid state lighting and
UV opto-electronics. So we really position to make breakthroughs
in a wide range of fields but our primary goal is really to develop novel solutions
to national security problems. I look at radiation hardness of discreet devices
and circuits and I also spend about half my time looking at single atom devices and how
we make those single atom devices is using our nano implanter and we start off with
a liquid metal alloy ion source and we mass-velocity select the ion that we want on target using
our E-cross-B filter and what this enables us to do is to control the ion type, the ion
number and the specific location of the ion into our sample and an application for that
for example is to make single photon sources into diamond, for both quantum computing and
quantum communication applications and the big advantage that we bring to the table is that
we know exactly where we put those effect centers. Most of my colleagues are world leaders in
their field, the facilities we work in our state-of-the-art and in some cases unique
in the world and so I feel it's just a unique environment to really work at the cutting
edge of science. The most rewarding part of working at Sandia
is getting to work with all the cool technology. The best part about working at Sandia is that
I get to work with some of the smartest people in America. And you’re really looking at
world-class researchers over a wide variety of different areas. That’s very hard to find, I think, at other
places. It is great to be able to combine the unique
capabilities with the diverse expertise to further fundamental science. Sandia takes on
problems that are either too expensive or too complicated for commercial companies to
solve alone and when we create an integrated circuit to solve one of those problems I can
be involved in every phase of their creation. So now you've seen it. A few tiny examples of the work done it at a 12,000-person hands-on laboratory that excites scientists and engineers, develops new technologies, and
supports national security. And we're always looking for talented people and new ideas
so visit us at Sandia.gov to see if this is the place for you.
