European Commission invests €3M to develop new chip that will help solve quantum computing bottlenecks

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On Thursday, The European Commission announced that it is investing €3M to develop the first-ever quantum chip that combines electronics and light using advanced Germanium-Silicon technology.

The mission is to make quantum computers faster, more efficient, and scalable, enabling them to tackle challenges like drug discovery, cybersecurity, and AI.

The ONCHIPS consortium, supported by the Quantum Flagship, is developing a new kind of quantum hardware using advanced materials that have never been combined before.

“One major issue of scalability is that qubits are often limited in their ability to interact with one another,” explains project coordinator Professor Floris Zwanenburg, full professor at the University of Twente’s MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. “As the number of qubits increases, effective communication between them becomes more complex.”

To achieve this, the ONCHIPS team is working with Germanium-Silicon (GeSi), a material discovered in 2020 that can emit light efficiently.

“We are combining spin qubits for computation and photonics for communication on a GeSi platform that is compatible with traditional CMOS manufacturing, which could be a total game-changer for scaling quantum computers. By combining spin qubits (electrons) with photonic communication (light), the chip bridges the gap between processing quantum information and transmitting it over long distances. This will significantly help us solve a major bottleneck in quantum scalability”, says Professor Zwanenburg.

Germanium-Silicon’s arrangement

GeSi has been studied for decades, particularly in semiconductor transistors, but it has only recently been applied in quantum computing.

“Materials like GeSi can have different arrangements of their atoms under different conditions,” said Professor Zwanenburg. “These arrangements dictate whether the material conducts electricity, emits light, or interacts with quantum particles. When we look at the atomic structure of ‘hexagonal GeSi’, the atoms do not appear in the usual “cubic” pattern. Instead, they have a six-sided, hexagonal, honeycomb-like arrangement.

While cubic GeSi has been used to create qubits, the hexagonal, light-emitting version has not been utilised until now.

“In this ‘hexagonal phase’, this special structure makes the material better at giving off light. The atomic structure means it is suitable for quantum applications and photonics, where controlling light is crucial for communication, computation, and storage.” adds Zwanenburg.

Making their quantum chips cheaper

The ONCHIPS team is making their quantum chips cheaper, easier to make, and ready to roll off the production line.

“ONCHIPS takes a unique and interdisciplinary approach: we are integrating everything onto a single chip to reduce the size and complexity of the system, making it easier to scale up. All the components, such as the qubits, communication pathways, and supporting electronics, are integrated into a single piece of material,” adds Professor Zwanenburg.

To fit all the components onto a single piece of material, the team uses a ‘monolithic integration’ technique – essentially, making the entire chip all at once.

By employing the techniques used today to develop computer chips or microchips with Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor (or ‘CMOS’) technology, the new quantum chips will be set up and ready for mass production.

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Vigneshwar Ravichandran

Vigneshwar has been a News Reporter at Silicon Canals since 2018. A seasoned technology journalist with almost a decade of experience, he covers the European startup ecosystem, from AI and Web3 to clean energy and health tech. Previously, he was a content producer and consumer product reviewer for leading Indian digital media, including NDTV, GizBot, and FoneArena. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Electronics and Instrumentation in Chennai and a Diploma in Broadcasting Journalism in New Delhi.

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