Scientific cooperation

We support active cooperation with Russian Academy of Sciences institutes (GPI, IREE, ISSP), with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR, Dubna) and Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology (MIET, Zelenograd). The helium cryostat for GPI CRYO was developed in cooperation with IREE and JINR, scanners for GPI CRYO and SPM-in-SEM — in cooperation with MIET. The prototypes of GPI 300 and GPI CRYO had been developed in cooperation with GPI.

Background

The company was built on the basis of GPI Laboratory of Surface Phenomena, with its unique expertise in developing and using surface analysis instruments and methods. The initial challenge to develop ultrahigh-vacuum STMs came from Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering observed in the process of copper and silver chlorination under ultrahigh vacuum conditions (Chem. Phys. Lett. 158 (1989) 271-273). In 1995, we carried out the first study of the surface at the atomic level in Russia (JETP Lett. 62 (1995) 444), and already in 1998 started commercial production of GPI 300, a full-functionality ultrahigh vacuum scanning tunneling microscope. The first GPI 300 was delivered to the University of Florence, Italy, and is still in operation there.

Sigma Scan was established later, in February 2002. In 2008, our GPI team created a prototype of an ultrahigh-vacuum low-temperature STM, operating at liquid helium temperatures. Currently it is commercially built by Sigma Scan under the name GPI CRYO.

In 2009, Sigma Scan developed a combined STM/AFM unit to be embedded in a scanning electron microscope to record the topography of selected objects with atomic resolution. The first such unit was built for Zeiss’s Supra 40 scanning electron microscope.

The biggest project currently in the pipeline is the development of a lab-level setup for constructing surface nanostructures, including functional electronic elements, with desired properties. The concept is based on controlling the topology and size of elements under ultrahigh (or extremely high) vacuum through a combination of scanning probe (SPM) and scanning electron (SEM) microscopes, high-precision (up to atomic scale) technological operations and local chemical reactions (in the area of the SPM probe).

We are also, in cooperation with GPI, making headways into nanolithography of silicon, based on electron-stimulated reactions in a layer of adsorbed chlorine, selective etching of AIIIBV semiconductors with molecular halogens and local surface metallization with the SPM probe.

Our Customers

1. University of Florence, Chemical Department (Italy, Florence).

2. Institute of Automation and Control Processes of Far Eastern Branch of RAS (Russia, Vladivostok).

3. Boreskov Institute of Catalysis (Russia, Novosibirsk).

4. Institute of Solid State Physics RAS (Russia, Chernogolovka).

5. Institute of Radio-engineering and Electronics (Russia, Moscow).

6. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute RAS (Russia, St. Petersburg).

7. Prokhorov General Physics Institute RAS (Russia, Moscow).

8. Institute of Metallurgy, Ural Branch of RAS (Russia, Ekaterinburg).

9. Bashkirian State University (Russia, Ufa).

10. Physics and Technique Institute, Ural Branch of RAS (Russia, Izhevsk).

11. Synchrotron Radiation Ring in Kurchatov Institute (Russia, Moscow).

Conferences & Exhibitions

Conferences

Sigma Scan is General Sponsor of the set of International Youth Schools on Surface Science "Technologies and measurements on atomic scale" (SSS-TMAS I, September 28 - October 2, 2011, Veliky Novgorod, Russia, http://sss-tmas.issp.ras.ru; SSS-TMAS II, October 1-7, 2012, Khosta (Sochi) Russia, http://www.sss-tmas.org).

Exhibitions

Contacts

R&D сompany “Sigma Scan Ltd.”

38, ulitsa Vavilova, 119991, Moscow, Russia

Tel/Fax: +7-499-5038769

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http://www.sigmascan.ru

R&D сompany “Sigma Scan Ltd.” on Yandex.Maps.