Intel moves closer to mass producing spin qubit chips • The Register

Intel says it has taken an important step in efforts to produce silicon spin qubit devices using existing manufacturing processes, a move they say could pave the way for large-scale production of quantum computers.

The chip giant said Intel Labs and Intel Components Research organizations have demonstrated “industry-leading” yield and uniformity for silicon spin qubit hardware.

Intel’s quantum angle has been to scale up the process of manufacturing quantum processor chips using its own transistor manufacturing techniques, which have been tuned for large-scale production for many decades.

The latest research was conducted using Intel’s second-generation silicon spin test chip, developed at its transistor research and development center, Gordon Moore Park at Ronler Acres in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Intel claims to have succeeded in delivering “the largest silicon electronic spin device in the industry”, with a single electron at each location on an entire 300 millimeter silicon wafer. The chips making up the wafer exhibit a high level of uniformity, the company said, claiming a 95% yield rate on the wafer.

Intel’s James Clarke with the wafer

This matches what Intel said was possible earlier in the year, when the company first announced that it had been able to produce silicon qubits for quantum logic gates using the same processes. of manufacturing than those used to mass-produce its processor chips.

The latest prototype silicon spin device was tested using a specially designed quantum cryoprobe. This is an unusual cryochamber in that it is large enough to accommodate Intel’s latest generation of dinner plate sized silicon wafers as well as the equipment used. to probe them, while operating at 1.7 Kelvin, just a little above absolute zero. , which is necessary for qubits to rotate in order to maintain their stability.

According to Intel, the inter-wafer yield it has achieved enables the automation of data collection on the wafer at the single-electron regime, leading to the largest demonstration of single and double quantum dots to date – more than 900 single quantum dots and more than 400 double quantum dots. points, the company said.

The increased yield and uniformity achieved over earlier spin qubit devices will allow the chipmaker to use statistical process control techniques to identify areas of the manufacturing process that they can optimize.

This represents a step towards being able to scale up to the thousands or millions of qubits that will be needed for a commercial quantum computer, according to James Clarke, director of Intel Quantum Hardware.

“The high throughput and uniformity achieved shows that fabricating quantum chips on Intel’s established transistor process nodes is a sound strategy and a strong indicator of success as technologies mature for commercialization,” said Clarke. “Going forward, we will continue to improve the quality of these devices and develop larger-scale systems, with these milestones serving as building blocks to help us move forward rapidly.”

Intel has previously explained that its vision is to create quantum computing devices that squeeze millions of individual qubits onto a single chip. This is to overcome the reliability issues of quantum systems using error correction techniques that rely on using many physical qubits to represent a single logical qubit.

Hundreds or thousands of logical qubits would be needed to build a system capable of the complex magic promised for fully fault-tolerant quantum computers, which is why companies like Intel are scrambling to get the millions of qubits needed.

Intel presented the full results of this research this week at the 2022 Silicon Quantum Electronics Workshop in Quebec, Canada. ®