Opinion: Democratizing Spin Qubits

Quantum 5, 584 (2021).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2021-11-18-584

I’ve been building Powerpoint-based quantum computers with electron spins in silicon for 20 years. Unfortunately, real-life-based quantum dot quantum computers are harder to implement. Materials, fabrication, and control challenges still impede progress. The way to accelerate discovery is to make and measure more qubits. Here I discuss separating the qubit realization and testing circuitry from the materials science and on-chip fabrication that will ultimately be necessary. This approach should allow us, in the shorter term, to characterize wafers non-invasively for their qubit-relevant properties, to make small qubit systems on various different materials with little extra cost, and even to test spin-qubit to superconducting cavity entanglement protocols where the best possible cavity quality is preserved. Such a testbed can advance the materials science of semiconductor quantum information devices and enable small quantum computers. This article may also be useful as a light and light-hearted introduction to quantum dot spin qubits.