An atom chip for the manipulation of ultracold atoms

We have fabricated an atom chip that magnetically traps laser cooled Rb-87 by generating high magnetic-field gradients using micrometre scale current-carrying wires. The wires are fabricated on a Si wafer (with a 40 nm SiO2 layer) using 1.2 mu m thick Au and a 20 nm thick adhesion layer, and are patterned with lift-off photolithography. We characterize the number and temperature of the cold atoms trapped by the chip.