The EQUSPACE consortium, short for Enabling New Quantum Frontiers with Spin Acoustics in Silicon, has secured €3.2 million in funding from the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) Pathfinder Open program. This support aims to accelerate the development of cutting-edge silicon-based quantum technologies. The project brings together five partners, including the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), from three EU countries. It unites experts specializing in spin qubits, optomechanics, and atomic silicon modifications to create a groundbreaking silicon-based quantum platform. Silicon has long been the cornerstone of traditional computers, but it currently plays a limited role in most popular quantum computing designs. Despite this, leveraging the extensive, multi-billion-euro silicon infrastructure already established for semiconductor technology could be a game-changer for processing qubits—the fundamental units of quantum information. Researchers have identified donor spin qubits as a promising candidate for this purpose. These qubits rely on the spin of impurity atoms to encode and process information. Unlike other quantum systems, donor spin qubits offer remarkable stability, maintaining their quantum states for extended periods — an essential trait for quantum computing operations.

Full research : Researchers are leveraging the established silicon infrastructure to pioneer donor spin qubits for quantum computing.