Hybrid single-electron turnstile - Towards a quantum standard of electric current

First I discuss various candidates of single-electron current pumps for quantum metrology. Then I focus on the hybrid normal-metal-superconductor turnstile in the form of a one-island single-electron transistor with one gate. The device demonstrates robust current plateaus at multiple levels of ef at frequency f. I discuss the various error mechanisms, based on our experiments and theoretical considerations. Ultimately the quantization accuracy is expected to be limited by either two-electron tunneling or by Cooper-pair-electron co-tunneling. We predict that it should be possible to achieve the metrological accuracy of 10
^-8
, while maintaining the quantized current on the level of more than 10 pA, just by one turnstile with realistic parameters using aluminium as a superconductor. Recently we have managed to run ten turnstiles in parallel increasing the current level to above 100 pA. Work on suppressing the harmful sub-gap leakage current is in progress with encouraging experimental results.