{"id":239769,"date":"2026-06-27T03:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/glass-cells-of-atoms-offer-a-new-path-to-smarter-cheaper-sensors"},"modified":"2026-06-27T03:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:12:10","slug":"glass-cells-of-atoms-offer-a-new-path-to-smarter-cheaper-sensors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/glass-cells-of-atoms-offer-a-new-path-to-smarter-cheaper-sensors","title":{"rendered":"Glass cells of atoms offer a new path to smarter, cheaper sensors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/glass-cells-of-atoms-offer-a-new-path-to-smarter-cheaper-sensors.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>More accurate navigation systems and improved wireless communications may not come from traditional electronics, but rather from atoms. Researchers at Penn State and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to build tinier, smarter glass sensors filled with highly precise and stable atoms.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s work, published this week (June 18) in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41378-026-01221-4\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Microsystems and Nanoengineering<\/i><\/a>, centers on a manufacturable, silicon-free version of traditional bulky \u201cvapor cells\u201d\u2014sealed chambers that contain cesium and rubidium atoms\u2014that are commonly used in precision measurement systems, in a gas state. These atoms can act as highly precise sensors because, unlike manufactured components, atoms are fundamentally identical.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUsing atoms for sensing is advantageous because the physics of individual atoms is very well understood, and all the atoms are equal,\u201d said Daniel Lopez, co-lead author of the paper, Liang Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Penn State and director of the Nanofabrication Lab at the Materials Research Institute (MRI). \u201cThat gives you a level of precision that\u2019s very hard to achieve with traditional microfabricated devices.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More accurate navigation systems and improved wireless communications may not come from traditional electronics, but rather from atoms. Researchers at Penn State and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to build tinier, smarter glass sensors filled with highly precise and stable atoms. The team\u2019s work, published this week [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1635],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239769","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=239769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239769\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}