{"id":229631,"date":"2026-01-23T01:23:48","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:23:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/3d-printed-surfaces-help-atoms-play-ball-to-improve-quantum-sensors"},"modified":"2026-01-23T01:23:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T07:23:48","slug":"3d-printed-surfaces-help-atoms-play-ball-to-improve-quantum-sensors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/3d-printed-surfaces-help-atoms-play-ball-to-improve-quantum-sensors","title":{"rendered":"3D-printed surfaces help atoms play ball to improve quantum sensors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/3d-printed-surfaces-help-atoms-play-ball-to-improve-quantum-sensors.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists have created 3D printed surfaces featuring intricate textures that can be used to bounce unwanted gas particles away from quantum sensors, allowing useful particles like atoms to be delivered more efficiently, which could help improve measurement accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers from the University of Nottingham\u2019s School of Physics and Astronomy created intricate, fine-scale surface textures that preferentially bounce incident particles in particular directions. This can help to keep unwanted particles out of the way. The team demonstrated this by applying it to a <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2023-04-3d-miniature-vacuum.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">surface-based vacuum pump<\/a> and tripled the rate at which it removed nuisance gas particles.<\/p>\n<p>The study, \u201cExploiting complex <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2025-09-miniaturized-ion-3d-quantum-hardware.html?utm_source=embeddings&utm_medium=related&utm_campaign=internal\" rel=\"related\" target=\"_blank\">3D-printed surface structures<\/a> for portable quantum technologies,\u201d is <a href=\"https:\/\/link.aps.org\/doi\/10.1103\/rg8y-rpsc\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Physical Review Applied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists have created 3D printed surfaces featuring intricate textures that can be used to bounce unwanted gas particles away from quantum sensors, allowing useful particles like atoms to be delivered more efficiently, which could help improve measurement accuracy. The researchers from the University of Nottingham\u2019s School of Physics and Astronomy created intricate, fine-scale surface textures [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}