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The world's purest silicon chips enable error-free quantum computers
Researchers have developed a new method for manufacturing quantum computer chips using high-purity silicon, which can significantly reduce the error rate of quantum computers. This is an important milestone in the realization of large-scale quantum computers.
Researchers have developed a new method for manufacturing quantum computer chips using high-purity silicon, which can significantly reduce the error rate of quantum computers. This is a major milestone in achieving large-scale quantum computers.
However, quantum computing technology is still in its early stages—it will take several more years to reach its full potential. One of the main challenges scientists need to overcome to achieve this goal is that current quantum computers have a high error rate.
These errors occur because qubits (the basic computing units of a quantum computer) are highly sensitive to minor changes in their environment. Currently, qubits can only reliably store information for fractions of a second.
The new method developed by Acharya and his colleagues can significantly increase the time qubits accurately store information, reduce their error rate, and pave the way for large-scale manufacturing of precise quantum computers.
Purifying silicon microchips
In this study, scientists used qubits made from phosphorus atoms implanted into silicon crystals. One of the key sources of error in these qubits comes from the composition of the silicon chip that houses and protects the qubits.
In nature, silicon is composed of three isotopes—atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. These three isotopes are silicon-28, silicon-29, and silicon-30.
Although silicon-29 isotopes only account for 4.7% of silicon in nature, they have an extra neutron, which is the culprit behind computational errors.
The goal is to purify the silicon wafer to contain only silicon-28 isotopes, which typically account for about 92% of natural silicon. Researchers used a technique called ion beam implantation, accelerating silicon-28 ions into commercially available silicon wafers, implanting silicon-28 and replacing silicon-29.
The result is a highly purified silicon-28 chip, with silicon-29 present at only 2.3 parts per million—the lowest value reported to date.
Furthermore, the method does not lead to contamination of the silicon chip with other elements, such as oxygen or carbon, which was a problem in earlier studies.
According to the authors, a key advantage is that the method used is scalable and cost-effective, and the equipment—ion implanters—is already common in laboratories manufacturing traditional computer microchips.
Manufacturing error-free quantum computers
Professor Richard Curry, Professor of Advanced Electronic Materials at the University of Manchester, said that this research lays the foundation for the materials needed to manufacture high-quality qubits. He estimates that this new method could extend the error-free information storage time of qubits from about one millisecond in natural silicon to about ten seconds in purified silicon.
The next step will be to assess the impact of the high-purity silicon chips on the performance of small-scale qubit systems.
Multi-qubit devices will emerge in the next year or so, but the million-qubit computers generally considered necessary for error-corrected quantum computing are still thought to be several years away, but that day is coming.
Quantum computers are still under development, and there are currently various approaches to building qubits. A major advantage of silicon-based qubits, such as those used in this study, is that the materials and techniques used are already common in the manufacture of traditional computer silicon microchips.
Ensuring our method is compatible with future manufacturing was a major driver, so we turned to ion implantation, commonly used in the microelectronics industry.
This new method is a significant milestone for silicon-based quantum computers towards the goal of manufacturing reliable and scalable quantum computers. Without our research, silicon-based quantum computers would not be able to compete with other quantum computing systems.
It is anticipated that future large-scale quantum computers will employ multiple quantum computing approaches, possibly hybrid systems combining different methods. Each approach is likely to find ways to solve specific types of problems, and they will coexist.
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