Posted: Aug 12, 2014 8:55 pm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28632263
B.B.C. Article
In a quantum computer, pure silicon is not enough - only one specific type of silicon atom will do.
The good stuff is silicon-28, and physicists in the US have worked out how to produce it with 40 times greater purity than ever before.
Even better, they can do it in the lab instead of relying on samples made ten years ago in a huge, repurposed plutonium plant in St Petersburg.
This promises to solve a serious supply problem in quantum computing research.
Several of the most promising schemes for building a quantum computer are based in silicon. One that has received much attention stores "qubits" in atoms of another element, like phosphorous, embedded in a tiny layer of ultra-pure silicon-28.
Qubits are the quantum replacement for bits - the ones and zeros that represent information inside a conventional computer. They promise to usher in a new era of computing because they can simultaneously encode a one and a zero, enabling incredibly fast and complex calculations.
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