Archer Exploration Limited has announced that it has successfully assembled the first qubit of the 12CQ room-temp chip with nanoscale precision.
Archer CEO, Dr Mohammad Choucair, said the ability to directly position individual qubits is a key requirement for building a scalable chip and derisks the company’s chip technology development.
He said the achievement is definitive proof for addressing a global quantum computing industry key success driver for early-stage quantum computing technology development related to scalability, practicality and use.
“This outstanding achievement further strengthens our commercial readiness, as we’ve met a key milestone in derisking and progressing the chip technology development, while demonstrating a key success factor [of a scalable qubit architecture] the quantum computing community commonly uses to qualify the most promising early-stage, long-term potentialsolutions to practical quantum computing.”
To assemble the first qubit component of Archer’s chip, a single qubit was isolated and precisely positioned on a silicon wafer, with the process being performed at room-temperature.
The process, which was performed at the Research and Prototype Foundry within the world-class, $150 million purpose-built Sydney Nanoscience Hub facility, at the University of Sydney, was performed with nanometre scale accuracy on silicon substrates and was repeatable and reproducible.
Mr Choucair said further improvements and optimisation to the Process are likely to reduce the time required to build a working chip prototype.
“The qubits are only a few tens of nanometres in size and this means we need to have a high level of accuracy in physically positioning our qubits to successfully build a working Device,” he explained.
“It is incredibly difficult to apply such a high of degree precision in controlling qubit location; however, we have unambiguously achieved this, making it possible to scale our chip qubits.”
Archer said it is looking to continue technology de-risking value-added development of the 12 CQ qubit processor chip by completing the next stages of component assembly towards a proof-of-concept prototype chip, which is required to establish a minimum viable product.
The company intends to commercialise chip products through licencing and direct sales by seeking to establish commercial partnerships with highly resourced and skilled organisations including software developers and hardware manufacturers that could allow for product scale, IP transfer, and distribution channels.
