In a flurry of research reports during the past six months, physicists have proven that silicon, the basis of computers today, could also be the best platform for tomorrow's quantum computers.
Such computers would use the quantum properties of atoms or molecules to perform calculations in a fraction of the time it would take conventional computers. However, so far only rudimentary quantum computers have been built, comprising only a few quantum bits (qubits) and built in exotic systems such as ion traps, cryogenically cooled superconductors, and optical tweezers.
Silicon could provide a useful path to systems with 100 or more qubits, say some scientists, because it would make quantum computers easily compatible with conventional ones. The silicon solution originated in 1998, when Bruce Kane, a physicist at the University of Maryland, in College Park, suggested making a qubit from the nuclear spin—a quantum property similar to magnetic moment—of the phosphorus atoms with which silicon is often doped.
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