Engineers develop room temperature, two-dimensional platform for quantum technology

Quantum computers promise to be a revolutionary technology because their elementary building blocks, qubits, can hold more information than the binary, 0-or-1 bits of classical computers. But to harness this capability, hardware must be developed that can access, measure and manipulate individual quantum states.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science have now demonstrated a new hardware platform based on isolated electron spins in a two-dimensional material. The electrons are trapped by defects in sheets of hexagonal boron nitride, a one-atom-thick semiconductor material, and the researchers were able to optically detect the system's quantum states.

The study was led by Lee Bassett, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, and Annemarie Exarhos, then a postdoctoral researcher in his lab.

Fellow Bassett Lab members David Hopper and Raj Patel, along with Marcus Doherty of the Australian National University, also contributed to the study.

It was published in the journal Nature Communications, where it was selected as an Editor's Highlight.

Thereare number of potential architectures for building quantum technology. One promising system involves electron spins in diamonds: these spins are also trapped at defects in diamond's regular crystalline pattern where carbon atoms are missing or replaced by other elements. The defects act like isolated atoms or molecules, and they interact with light in a way that enables their spin to be measured and used as a qubit.