Developing Silicon-Based Quantum Technology
There are many benefits to enabling quantum bits based on silicon. The full work from the source document presents a well-rounded synopsis of manufacturing of silicon qubits. Because Quantum is Coming. Qubit.
Manufacturing silicon qubits at scale
Selected notes ~
+ In principle, there are lots of ways to construct qubits. Some advanced prototypes use qubits made of a few dozen ions of rubidium or ytterbium, trapped in a vacuum chamber by time-varying electromagnetic fields. Other systems use lithographically patterned superconducting circuits kept at millikelvin temperatures in dilution refrigerators. Recently, however, experimental breakthroughs in silicon-based nanodevices have brought a third option to the fore. This option is, in effect, to manufacture quantum processors in the same way as conventional microprocessors, by leveraging widely deployed industrial complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology.
It is still too early to say whether silicon will provide a path to the much sought-after general-purpose quantum machine. What is clear, however, is that it is a solid candidate eagerly backed by an industry that is keen to reinvent itself in a post-Moore’s-law future.
+ Perhaps the biggest attraction of silicon-based quantum processors, however, is that at their heart, they use the same technology that the microchip industry has handled for the past 60 years. This means manufacturers can expect to benefit from previous multibillion-dollar infrastructure investments, keeping production costs low. Just as importantly, using silicon as a basis for a quantum computer means that all the clever engineering and processing that went into developing modern classical microelectronics – from dense device packaging to integrated interconnect routing – can be adapted and used to build quantum devices.
+ Silicon-based quantum computing has come a long way since the late 1990s. The idea of taking conventional transistors and using them interchangeably as qubits or control devices on the same integrated circuit could, in the long run, prove viable both technically and commercially. The commercial promise of such a device means that research in the field extends beyond the traditional boundaries of university laboratories and into the research centres of global corporations such as Intel and Hitachi, both of which have long-standing collaborations with academic hubs in quantum computing.
Source: physicsworld. Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba and Tsung-Yeh Yang, Manufacturing silicon qubits at scale…
Content may have been edited for style and clarity.
