The purest silicon in the world. The material can completely transform computers

Super-pure silicon is, of course, used to produce processors. However, these will not be processors for your desktop or smartphone.

Pure silicon for reliable qubits

The silicon from which processors are made today is very pure, but it is not perfect. Let's just say it's adequate for what it's being used for. However, it was possible to develop an even purer material, composed of atoms of only one isotope of this element. Scientists hope that will be useful in the construction of qubits – the basic units of a quantum computer.

It is worth presenting the idea of ​​a quantum computer here. The ones we use every day use two bit states for calculations – zeros and ones. All operations are performed on them. Qubits use the behavior of elementary particles to be in a superposition of two states at the same time. During calculations, they can be both zero and one. Specialists are already developing algorithms for such computers and hope that they will be able to use currently unimaginable computing power.

However, this will require building a quantum computer with about a million stable qubits. So far, about a thousand have been built. Qubits not only escape classical mechanics, but also are extremely susceptible to disruption. Just a slight change in temperature is enough for the calculations to go to hell. Qubits made of superconducting metals, such as tantalum or niobium, must be cooled to almost absolute zero and spare ones must be used, which makes quantum machines completely inefficient.

In May 2024, scientists proposed the use of a different material: the well-known silicon, which is a semiconductor. There are materials such as silicon (and germanium and gallium). relatively cheap, maintain coherence longer and do not require such intensive cooling. It is possible that there will be no need to bury them underground to avoid disturbances. While allow you to build quite small qubitsso the quantum chips themselves could be smaller than metal ones.

You just need to achieve the appropriate purity of the material so that accidental admixtures do not cause disruptions. Scientists believe they have just succeeded. They built one in Manchester silicon-28 qubit. Not only the contamination was removed, but also the other two isotopes of silicon that occur in nature: silicon-29 and silicon-30.

Theoretically, a quantum chip could be built using the same methods that we use to produce conventional microprocessors today. But will it work? First, you need to try to maintain coherence on several neighboring qubits.

You can read more about the experiment in an article published in Nature.