A miniature atomic scalar magnetometer based on the rubidium isotope
87
Rb was developed for operation in space. The instrument design implements both
M
x
and
M
z
mode operation and leverages a novel microelectromechanical system (MEMS) fabricated vapor cell and a custom silicon‐on‐sapphire (SOS) complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit. The vapor cell has a volume of only 1 mm
3
so that it can be efficiently heated to its operating temperature by a specially designed, low‐magnetic‐field‐generating resistive heater implemented in multiple metal layers of the transparent sapphire substrate of the SOS‐CMOS chips. The SOS‐CMOS chip also hosts the Helmholtz coil and associated circuitry to stimulate the magnetically sensitive atomic resonance and temperature sensors. The prototype instrument has a total mass of fewer than 500 g and uses less than 1 W of power, while maintaining a sensitivity of 15 pT/√Hz at 1 Hz, comparable to present state‐of‐the‐art absolute magnetometers.
12 Advanced micro-fabrication and packaging techniques provided through microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology enable fabrication and system integration of a miniature Flat Plasma Spectrometer (FlaPS) capable of making fine resolution measurements of the kinetic energy spectra and angular distributions of ions in a space environment. This instrument demonstration will fly on USAFA Falconsat-3 and represents a demonstration of how advanced fabrication techniques for the microprocessing world can be utilized to derive aggressive miniaturization. High performance metrics in terms of sensitivity and resolution are achievable with significant reductions in mass and power compared to conventional spectrometers. A FlaPS instrument, including sensor-head array, printed circuit board with amplifier array electronics, power supply, and chassis has been designed and built to occupy a volume of approximately 200 cm 3 in a 0.5kg, 300mW package. This technique could easily be migrated to other instruments and in the future potentially to subsystems.
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