Project ARCTIC Pushes Quantum Processors Toward Scalability

The European Union (EU)-funded Project ARCTIC brings together 36 international partners from industry, academia, and other areas with the aim of establishing a complete and comprehensive European supply chain for cryogenic quantum processors. The EU has funded the project with more than €11 million ($12 million) over three years.

The project's stakeholders aim to create a supply chain with scalable, reliable, innovative control infrastructure for cryogenic photonics, microelectronics, and cryomicrosystems around the emerging quantum computing industry and different cryo-enabled Information and communication technologies applications.

A cryogenic on-wafer prober at Fraunhofer IAF, which is being used in the ARCTIC project, can automatically fully characterize up to 25 whole 200 mm or 300 mm wafers with devices for quantum technologies. Courtesy of Fraunhofer IPMS.

“The performance requirements asked of electronic devices and circuits at cryogenic temperatures are quite different compared to those at room temperature,” said Alexander Grill, scientific leader of Project ARCTIC. The expected outcomes of the project could help resolve existing problems in areas such as computational chemistry, bio and life sciences, cryptography needed for data protection, and cyber security.

Organizations like Fraunhofer’s Institutes for Photonic Microsystems and Applied Solid State Physics have joined the project. Specifically, Fraunhofer will focus on the characterization of semiconducting devices in cryogenic environments and peripheral devices for cryogenic quantum computing processors on full wafers. They will also study the analysis of electrical behaviors of transistors and memory devices at untypically low temperatures.

Other organizations include project coordinator imec, Infineon Technologies AG, IQM Finland OY, STMicroelectronics France, University College Cork, Intel Research and Development Ireland Limited, Delft University of Technology, and Lund University.