Victoria Millar

A role for ion implantation in quantum computing

Abstract We propose to create arrays of phosphorus atoms in silicon for quantum computing using ion implantation. Since the implantation of the ions is essentially random, the yield of usefully spaced atoms is low and therefore some method of registering the passage of a single ion is required. This can be accomplished by implantation of the ions through a thin surface layer consisting of resist. Changes to the chemical and/or electrical properties of the resist will be used to mark the site of the buried ion. For chemical changes, the latent damage will be developed and the atomic force microscope (AFM) used to image the changes in topography. Alternatively, changes in electrical properties (which obviate the need for post-irradiation chemical etching) will be used to register the passage of the ion using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), the surface current imaging mode of the AFM. We address the central issue of the contrast created by the passage of a single ion through resist layers of PMMA and C60.

Interdisciplinary curriculum reform in the changing university

ABSTRACT In response to the current demands and trends within education, the disciplines as one of the core long-standing organizing structures within knowledge production and transmission are questioning and shifting what and how they teach. Universities are increasingly offering interdisciplinary subjects and programmes as an alternative to or alongside disciplinary subjects. This paper investigates the underlying themes and principles that inform curriculum debate around the value of the disciplines and interdisciplinarity in Australia when compared to the views and practices of academics. A focus on the knowledge that is included in discipline-based and interdisciplinary curricula reveals interdisciplinary knowledge to be more weakly classified and framed than discipline-based knowledge. This has consequences for the depth of interdisciplinary knowledge and requires the consideration of the structure and place of interdisciplinary curricula in university education.

‘Powerful knowledge’ curriculum theories and the case of physics

ABSTRACT A stream of debate (including a previous special issue of this journal (25(1) 2014)) has made claims not just for ‘bringing knowledge back in’ as the framing underpinning of the school curriculum, but that subjects associated with disciplinary and disciplined knowledge forms have a particular power and that these characteristics are important to preserve in curriculum frameworks. This paper draws on a major Australian research project studying school and university physics in the context of these arguments to revisit the issue of the ‘discipline’ of physics and the curriculum logics for physics. Given that disciplines are social in origin and changing and expanding over time, can school curriculum be logically derived from the discipline to which they relate? Are questions about student engagement only questions about pedagogy and not curriculum? Does a focus on disciplinary knowledge mean that the role of school in forming identities and values is avoidable as a significant feature of what the curriculum does? The findings from the project are used both to illustrate and test these questions, and to challenge some over-simple assumptions about the verticality of this form of knowledge for education purposes.

Nanoscale fabrication using single-ion impacts

We describe a novel technique for the fabrication of nanoscale structures, based on the development of localized chemical modification caused in a polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) resist by the implantation of single ions. The implantation of 4 MeV He ions through a thin layer of PMMA into an underlying silicon substrate causes latent damage in the resist. On development of the resist we demonstrate the formation within the PMMA layer of clearly defined etched holes, of typical diameter 30 nm, observed using an atomic force microscope employing a carbon nanotube SPM probe in intermittent-contact mode. This technique has significant potential applications. Used purely to register the passage of an ion, it may be a useful verification of the impact sites in an ion-beam modification process operating at the single-ion level. Furthermore, making use of the hole in the PMMA layer to perform subsequent fabrication steps, it may be applied to the fabrication of self-aligned structures in which surface features are fabricated directly above regions of an underlying substrate that are locally doped by the implanted ion. Our primary interest in single-ion resists relates to the development of a solid-state quantum computer based on an array of31P atoms (which act as qubits) embedded with nanoscale precision in a silicon matrix (Kane B E 1998 Nature 393 133?7). One proposal for the fabrication of such an array is by phosphorus-ion implantation. A single-ion resist would permit an accurate verification of31P implantation sites. Subsequent metallization of the latent damage may allow the fabrication of self-aligned metal gates above buried phosphorus atoms.

Thin film resists for registration of single-ion impacts

We demonstrate registration of the location of the impact site of single ions using a thin film polymethyl methacrylate resist on a SiO2/Si substrate. Carbon nanotube-based atomic force microscopy is used to reveal craters in the surface of chemically developed films, consistent with the development of latent damage induced by single-ion impacts. The responses of thin PMMA films to the implantation of He+ and Ga+ ions indicate the role of electronic and nuclear energy loss mechanisms at the single-ion level.

New Public Management and the Changing Governance of Universities

This chapter analyses the significant changes that have been taking place over recent decades both in the national governance and the institutional management of universities in Australia. It outlines the major political dimensions of these changes as well as the ideas and conceptions associated with them. It begins first by discussing the rise of the conception of the modern university as an industry , characterised by corporate forms, market ideas and ideals, and utilitarian conceptions of purposes. This chapter then discusses the major changes in the national governance of universities, beginning with the Dawkins higher education policy reforms of the late 1980s. Since these reforms, national governance of universities in Australia has been characterised by highly competitive research funding arrangements, comprehensive reporting and accountability requirements for the core activities of teaching and research, and a continuing reduction in public funding. Within universities these changes have led to more managerial forms of governance and organisation, the use of performance indicators that align with those used at the national level, and decreased professional autonomy of academics.

Shifting Knowledge Forms in the University Physics Curriculum: Academics’ Perceptions

This chapter takes the traditional discipline of physics as a context for investigating how academics are navigating current changes in higher education and how they see these changes as reconfiguring knowledge in their discipline. In particular the chapter will explore knowledge in the university physics curriculum at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level and whether this is being reconfigured in response to current changes in higher education both endogenous and exogenous to the discipline.

From Disciplinary Excellence to Interdisciplinary Collaboration: How Australian Academics Negotiate Competing Knowledge Agendas

This chapter draws on research with historians and physicists to elucidate a bottom-up perspective on two knowledge agendas within research policy and funding mechanisms in Australia. On the one hand the government and universities are concerned with quality and international rankings that are underpinned by disciplinary categorizations and direct and indirect peer review. On the other hand there is a drive to produce greater economic impact and shorter-term utilitarian outcomes, an agenda frequently conflated with a prioritization of interdisciplinarity and collaboration with industry. The chapter shows that the historians and physicists prize their initial disciplinary identity and training and see it as an important foundation for new interdisciplinary work. They are irritated by what they see as rigid top-down forms of research steering and funding and see some of this as counter-productive. In contrast to some policy reports, they do not see disciplinary and interdisciplinary agendas in binary terms but as important sources of mutual renewal, and largely find ways of complying with externally imposed changing agendas without changing their fundamental research commitments.

‘What Does Your Discipline Look Like and How Does It Matter?’ Historians and Physicists Talk

This is the first of three chapters reporting and discussing findings from our research interviews with university physicists and historians. This chapter focuses on their perceptions of disciplinary fields as forms of knowledge. Their responses reiterate some of the differentiating characteristics of vertical compared with horizontal knowledge fields as well as some strong disciplinary identifications with their respective fields, and belief in its value both as a specialist field and as a more general education and vocational foundation. In terms of the changing nature of their fields, physicists were more aware of endogenous changes, and historians more concerned with exogenous ones, particularly changing institutional conditions. We discuss how those from the two disciplines see the requirements of the undergraduate curriculum and the form of progression to research.

Changing Agendas and the Governance of the School Curriculum

This chapter traces recent changes in overarching agendas and governance mechanisms related to curriculum and the schooling sector. Schooling is now more tightly coupled to economic perspectives and a skills and standards agenda that is seen as best revealed and managed by test data. Internationally the OECD is a significant driver of such data and perspectives on school, drawing some widespread critical discussion in the education literature about the effects of a ‘testing-led’ or ‘accountability-driven’ curriculum, and the prioritising of global testing data over national concerns. However there is also some renewed attention by many national governments to school’s acculturation role in the face of global developments, with reform of history and citizenship curricula often targeted. In Australia, the past decade has seen a greater attention to schooling and curriculum in national politics, and the establishment of a new national body, ACARA , which has authority for curriculum, reporting and assessment. ACARA oversees the development of a new ‘Australian Curriculum’; the conduct of a new national testing program, NAPLAN ; and the production of a new website, My School , which publicly communicates comparative demographic and performance data, about individual schools. This chapter discusses implications for curriculum substance of these new mechanisms, as well as some political points of contention.