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The new quantum chip could potentially reduce the EU’s reliance on imported advanced chips.
The European Commission has invested €3m into a consortium developing the “first-ever” quantum chip that combines electronics and light using advanced Germanium-Silicon (GeSi) technology to create faster and more efficient quantum computers.
Supported by the EU’s Quantum Flagship initiative, Onchips is a consortium of seven organisations led by Prof Floris Zwanenburg from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, laying the foundation for a new type of quantum hardware with GeSi, a material whose efficient light-emitting ability was only a recent discovery.
According to researchers, the scalability of quantum computers is hindered by qubits’ (a unit of quantum information) limited ability to interact with one another, especially as their numbers increase. However, GeSi, when used in a unique hexagonal light-emitting version, offers a viable solution. While the material has been long used for different applications, including in transistors for semiconductor physics, it has never been implemented for quantum computing before.
“Materials like GeSi can have different arrangements of their atoms under different conditions,” said Zwanenburg, who is a professor at the university’s Mesa+ Institute for Nanotechnology.
“These arrangements dictate whether the material conducts electricity, emits light or interacts with quantum particles. When we look at the atomic structure of hexagonal GeSi, the atoms do not appear in the usual cubic pattern. Instead, they have a six-sided, hexagonal, honeycomb-like arrangement.
“In this ‘hexagonal phase’, this special structure makes the material better at giving off light. The atomic structure means it is suitable for quantum applications and photonics, where controlling light is crucial for communication, computation and storage.”
Moreover, the Onchips team is using a ‘monolithic integration’ technique to fit all the components of a quantum chip on a single piece of material, manufacturing the entire chip at once – and according to Zwanenburg, this reduces the size and complexity of the system, making scaling up easier.
The four-year project, which is set to conclude in 2026, aims to integrate quantum components with GeSi that is compatible with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology (the technology used in most of today’s integrated circuits), to create a new type of quantum chip ready for mass production, and potentially reduce the EU’s reliance on imported advanced chips.
Alongside Onchips, Quantum Flagship, a 10-year, large-scale initiative with more than €1bn in funding from the EU, has dozens of other quantum-related projects aimed at consolidating and expanding Europe’s scientific leadership in the field.
Last month, Irish quantum computing company Equal1 announced the “world’s first” multi-tile quantum controller chip. According to the University College Dublin spin-out, this “groundbreaking technology” will enable scaling to millions of orchestrated qubits on a single chip, improving the scalability of quantum computing.
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