Low Vibration SideKick Tower
- Four9 Design has over a decade experience with low vibration designs for optical cryostats. Even with a vibration isolated optical table, there are sources of motion that are troublesome for experimenters. For cryostats with a helium pump, like the Gifford-McMahon, energy is introduced from the rotation of the pump mechanism, as well as the seemingly fixed helium hoses that cycle liquid to and from the compressor. Additional vacuums pumps can introduce noise if not managed properly.
- Our innovative approach moves the cryo-cooler and vacuum pumps off the table into a tower, which we call the SideKick, where the bulk of the energy is shunted into the floor of the lab.
- This allows our systems to have much larger cryo-coolers, which have energy many times what the 100mW cooler has. The standard SideKick SK0300 with a 1-watt cryo-cooler and 300mW cooling power at the cold plate has only 30nm motion in the X, Y, and Z directions.
Low Vibration Insert
Some low temperature work requires even lower motion, for example, for Scanning Probe Measurements (SPM). We offer a “low vibration Insert” that works with these precision scanning systems and allows atomic resolution images. This is done with an independent high-mass platform that blocks the motion frequencies of the lab equipment, so that the sample moves with the sensitive measuring device in it’s own inertial frame of reference.
Below is an image showing atomic resolution taken on a SK300 using a STM from Renaissance Scientific.
