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Pushing Boundaries in Measurement Technology - the long-term partnership between Oxford Instruments NanoScience and Lake Shore Cryotronics

By Limeng Ni and Nadia Dugan

Our history of collaboration

Oxford Instruments’ partnership with Lake Shore goes back a number of years. Lake Shore has supplied cryogenic sensors and instrumentations for integration into various Oxford Instruments systems. Lake Shore has 55-years of experience providing world-class measurement and control solutions for materials characterisation under extreme temperature and magnetic field conditions. Lake Shore participated in leading research projects worldwide, including the CERN Large Hadron Collider and NASA’s space exploration missions.

Since 2019, Oxford Instrument’s TritonXL 900 cryogen-free dilution refrigerator has been installed on Lake Shore’s manufacturing floor to calibrate their ultra-low temperature Rox™ sensors. Accurate calibration is vital to a vast majority of low-temperature research occurring today. Lake Shore prides itself on its state-of-the-art calibration expertise, operating as one of the most advanced sensor calibration facilities in the world. With the Triton dilution refrigerator at the centre of this, they are able to calibrate temperatures down to 5 mK.

Complimenting expertise

Oxford Instruments NanoScience helps users advance physics and material science research with high-performance cryostats and superconducting magnets. Its partnerships with companies like Lake Shore leverage the unique experience of each party to boost user experience and make complex research experiments as easy to set up and carry out as possible.

Oxford Instruments NanoScience is developing a cutting-edge transport measurement system based on the TeslatronPT platform. It seamlessly integrates with Lake Shore’s measurement instrumentations, including the M81 synchronous source measure system and the M91 FastHall Measurement Controller. At the core of this innovation lies its adaptability, leveraging an open-framework environment. This flexibility allows users to easily tailor the system to meet their specific research needs and seamlessly incorporate various third-party components.

Pride in experience and in being a good resource to customers are two attributes Oxford Instruments and Lake Shore share. Whether it’s I-V curves or different types of AC and DC resistivity measurements, uncovering quantum phenomena, and fine-tuning materials for advanced technological applications, the applications scientists at both companies have a varied background with expertise in measurements at cryogenic temperatures and high magnetic fields. It is not unheard of for an applications scientist to go so far as to set up the same measurement in their own lab to try and replicate what a customer is seeing and offer the most helpful recommendations.

OI NanoScience and Lake Shore team in front of the Triton system in Lake Shore’s factory in Westerville, Ohio

OI NanoScience and Lake Shore team in front of the Triton system in Lake Shore’s factory in Westerville, Ohio

Looking to the future

The opportunities for future collaborations are vast. Providing a complete measurement solution based on the Teslatron superconducting magnet and Lake Shore’s measurement instrumentations could enable reduced time-to-measurements and optimised signal chain. This will open the door to a host of research and material characterisation applications. Both companies' commitment to making research more accessible and inclusive shines through in this game-changing advancement.

OI NanoScience and Lake Shore’s exec meeting in Nov 2023

OI NanoScience and Lake Shore’s exec meeting in Nov 2023

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