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QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY

Graphene qubit motivates materials science

Nature Nanotechnology volume 14, pages 102–103 (2019)Cite this article

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On the route towards a useful quantum computer, we must not ignore the materials challenges facing us nor the opportunities that materials science may provide for disruptive new qubits.

In the design of quantum computers, one usually trades off complexity of integration with the work needed to improve the performance of the qubit. This probably means that we have to advance against the challenges of integration and control, design and material engineering simultaneously (Fig. 1a). The past few years have seen impressive integrations of small qubit systems, with modest two-qubit fidelity achieved. For superconducting qubits, these systems are based on variants of the transmon2, a qubit relying on the nonlinear inductance of the Josephson tunnel junction and controlled (when designed to be tunable) by means of a current bias. But most known problems of practical interest are estimated to require ten orders of magnitude more gates and orders of magnitude better fidelity than the state-of-the-art3, imposing enormous challenges on the architects of any future quantum computer.

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Fig. 1: From working qubits to integrated quantum computers.

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  1. Laboratory for Physical Sciences, College Park, MD, USA

    Charles Tahan

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  1. Charles Tahan
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Correspondence to Charles Tahan.

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Tahan, C. Graphene qubit motivates materials science. Nature Nanotech 14, 102–103 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-019-0369-2

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