Tuning of gate-defined semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) is a major bottleneck for scaling spin-qubit technologies. We present a deep learning driven, semantic-segmentation pipeline that performs charge auto-tuning by locating transition lines in full charge stability diagrams (CSDs) and returns gate voltage targets for the single charge regime. We assemble and manually annotate a large, heterogeneous dataset of 1015 experimental CSDs measured from fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) QD devices, spanning nine design geometries, multiple wafers, and fabrication runs. A U-Net style convolutional neural network with a MobileNetV2 encoder is trained and validated through five-fold group cross-validation. Our model achieves an overall offline tuning success of 80.0% in locating the single-charge regime, with peak performance exceeding 88% for some designs. We analyze dominant failure modes and propose targeted mitigations. Finally, wide-range diagram segmentation also naturally enables scalable physics-based feature extraction that can feed back to fabrication and design workflows and outline a roadmap for real-time integration in a cryogenic wafer prober. Overall, our results show that neural network based wide-diagram segmentation is a practical step toward automated, high-throughput charge tuning for silicon QD qubits.

The displacement of a single electron enables exciting avenues for nanotechnology with vast application potential in quantum metrology, quantum communication and quantum computation. Surface acoustic waves (SAW) have proven itself as a surprisingly useful solution to perform this task over large distance with outstanding precision and reliability. Over the last decade, important milestones have been achieved bringing SAW-driven single-electron transport from first proof-of-principle demonstrations to accurate, highly-controlled implementations, such as coherent spin transport, charge-to-photon conversion, or anti-bunching of charge states. Beyond the well-established piezoelectric gallium-arsenide platform, first realisations of acousto-electronic transport have also been carried out on the surface of liquid helium that promises unique stability and coherence. In this review article, we aim to keep track of this remarkable progress in SAW-driven transport of electron qubits by explaining these recent achievements from basic principles, with an outlook on follow-up experiments and near-term applications.

Charge noise is one of the main sources of environmental decoherence for spin qubits in silicon, presenting a major obstacle in the path towards highly scalable and reproducible qubit fabrication. Here we demonstrate in-depth characterization of the charge noise environment experienced by a quantum dot in a CMOS-fabricated silicon nanowire. We probe the charge noise for different quantum dot configurations, finding that it is possible to tune the charge noise over two orders of magnitude, ranging from 1 ueV^2 to 100 ueV^2. In particular, we show that the top interface and the reservoirs are the main sources of charge noise and their effect can be mitigated by controlling the quantum dot extension. Additionally, we demonstrate a novel method for the measurement of the charge noise experienced by a quantum dot in the few electron regime. We measure a comparatively higher charge noise value of 40 ueV^2 at the first electron, and demonstrate that the charge noise is highly dependent on the electron occupancy of the quantum dot.

The usefulness of mesa patterning in building a two-dimensional array of silicon quantum dots is explored using TCAD simulations at low temperature. We compare different structures and study the impact of geometric parameters on the charge confinement and control.

We propose and demonstrate complete spin state readout of a two-electron system in a double quantum dot probed by an electrometer. The protocol is based on repetitive single shot measurements using Pauli spin blockade and our ability to tune on fast timescales the detuning and the interdot tunnel coupling between the GHz and sub-Hz regime. A sequence of three distinct manipulations and measurements allows establishing if the spins are in S, Tzero, Tplus or Tminus state. This work points at a procedure to reduce the overhead for spin readout, an important challenge for scaling up spin qubit platforms.

We investigate experimentally the capacitive coupling between a two-electron singlet-triplet spin qubit and flying electrons propagating in quantum Hall edge channels. After calibration of the spin qubit detector, we assess its charge sensibility and demonstrate experimentally the detection of less than five flying electrons with average measurement. This experiment demonstrates that the spin qubit is an ultrasensitive and fast charge detector with the perspective of a future single shot-detection of a single flying electron. This work opens the route toward quantum electron optics experiments at the single electron level in semiconductor circuits.

One of the main advantages of silicon spin qubits over other solid-state qubits is their inherent scalability and compatibility with the 300-mm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) fabrication technology that is already widely used in the semiconductor industry, while maintaining high readout and gate fidelities. We demonstrate the detection of a single electron spin using energy-selective readout in a CMOS-fabricated nanowire device with an integrated charge detector. We measure a valley splitting of 0.3 meV and 0.16 meV in two similar devices. The anisotropy of the spin-valley mixing is measured and shown to follow the dependence expected from the symmetry of the local confinement, indicating low disorder in the region of the quantum dot. Finally the charge noise in the strong spin-valley coupling regime is investigated and found to induce fluctuations in the qubit energy in the range of 0.6 GHz/ root Hz.

We demonstrate singlet-triplet readout and parity readout allowing to distinguish T0 and the polarized triplet states. We achieve high fidelity spin readout with an average fidelity above $99.9\%$ for a readout time of $20~\mu$s and $99\%$ for $4~\mu$s at a temperature of $0.5~K$. We initialize a singlet state in a single dot with a fidelity higher than $99\%$ and separate the two electrons while keeping the same spin state with $a \approx 95.6\%$ fidelity.

Recent demonstrations using electron spins stored in quantum dot array as qubits are promising for developing a scalable quantum computing platform. An ongoing effort is, therefore, aiming at the precise control of the quantum dot parameters in larger and larger arrays which represents a complex challenge. Partitioning of the system with the help of the inter-dot tunnel barriers can lead to a simplification for tuning and offers a protection against unwanted charge displacement. In a triple quantum dot system, we demonstrate a nanosecond control of the inter-dot tunnel rate permitting to reach the two extreme regimes, large GHz tunnel coupling, and sub-Hz isolation between adjacent dots. We use this development to isolate a subpart of the array in a metastable configuration while performing charge displacement and readout in the rest of the system. The degree of control over tunnel coupling achieved in a unit cell should motivate future protocol development for tuning, manipulation, and readout including this capability.

The low temperature operation of quantum computing devices implies developing characterization protocols, from extensive statistical tests to targeted device screening at cryogenic temperature. This paper reviews major integration constraints arising in linear Si quantum dots arrays and their implication on both the device operation and electrical characterization.

On-going efforts in scaling-up solid-state spin qubits are hindered by the need for a characterization workflow that assesses the correct device operation at low temperature, and for the associated quality and variability metrics. We present here our fast characterization methodology for qubit devices, and present wafer-level (WL) measurements on qubit-array structures at both 300K and 1K. Transistor-like metrics and material characterization provide feedbacks to process integration. They must be enriched by WL measurements at 1K that contain specific information about the electron confinement in a quantum dot. As such, they are crucial for process evaluation as well as device screening before continuing to mK characterization. We measure and automatically extract for the first time WL quantum dot metrics.

The synthesis of single-cycle pulses of compressed light and microwave signals sparked novel areas of fundamental research. In the field of acoustics, however, such a generation has not been introduced yet. For numerous applications, the large spatial extent of surface acoustic waves (SAW) causes unwanted perturbations and limits the accuracy of physical manipulations. Particularly, this restriction applies to SAW-driven quantum experiments with single flying electrons, where extra modulation renders the exact position of the transported electron ambiguous and leads to undesired spin mixing. Here, we address this challenge by demonstrating single-shot chirp synthesis of a strongly compressed acoustic pulse. Employing this solitary SAW pulse to transport a single electron between distant quantum dots with an efficiency exceeding 99%, we show that chirp synthesis is competitive with regular transduction approaches. Performing a time-resolved investigation of the SAW-driven sending process, we outline the potential of the chirped SAW pulse to synchronize single-electron transport from many quantum-dot sources. By superimposing multiple pulses, we further point out the capability of chirp synthesis to generate arbitrary acoustic waveforms tailorable to a variety of (opto)nanomechanical applications. Our results shift the paradigm of compressed pulses to the field of acoustic phonons and pave the way for a SAW-driven platform of single-electron transport that is precise, synchronized, and scalable.

Scalability is one of the biggest advantages of silicon spin qubits over other platforms, making them very promising candidates in the quest for quantum computing. In this work we approach the regime of interest for large-scale qubit integration, showing that we can deliver high electrostatic coupling control and individual tunability over an array of quantum dots (QDs). To do this we use FDSOI devices fabricated with 2-metal gate levels in an industry-compatible CMOS process. We operate them at 100mK, and in a dot-configuration where large control on tunnel barriers is leveraged. In the many-electron regime, we observe the transition of quantum dot array from single- to triple-dot configurations. Moreover, in the few-electron regime, we demonstrate the effective and in-situ modulation of the tunnel coupling between two adjacent QDs.

Surface acoustic waves (SAW) have large potential to realize quantum-optics-like experiments with single flying electrons employing their spin or charge degree of freedom. For such quantum applications, highly efficient trapping of the electron in a specific moving quantum dot (QD) of a SAW train plays a key role. Probabilistic transport over multiple moving minima would cause uncertainty in synchronisation that is detrimental for coherence of entangled flying electrons and in-flight quantum operations. It is thus of central importance to identify the device parameters enabling electron transport within a single SAW minimum. A detailed experimental investigation of this aspect is so far missing. Here we fill this gap by demonstrating time-of-flight measurements for a single electron that is transported via a SAW train between distant stationary QDs. Our measurements reveal the in-flight distribution of the electron within the moving acousto-electric quantum dots of the SAW train. Increasing the acousto-electric amplitude, we observe the threshold necessary to confine the flying electron at a specific, deliberately chosen SAW minimum. Investigating the effect of a barrier along the transport channel, we also benchmark the robustness of SAW-driven electron transport against stationary potential variations. Our results pave the way for highly controlled transport of electron qubits in a SAW-driven platform for quantum experiments.

The ability to shuttle coherently individual electron spins in arrays of quantum dots is a key procedure for the development of scalable quantum information platforms. It allows the use of sparsely populated electron spin arrays, envisioned to efficiently tackle the one- and two-qubit gate challenges. When the electrons are displaced in an array, they are exposed to site-dependent environment interactions such as hyperfine coupling with substrate nuclear spins. Here, we demonstrate that the electron multidirectional displacement in a 3 x 3 array of tunnel-coupled quantum dots enhances the spin-coherence time via the motional narrowing phenomenon. More specifically, up to ten charge configurations are explored by the electrons to study the impact of the displacement on spin dynamics. An increase of the coherence time by a factor up to 10 is observed in the case of fast and repetitive displacement. A simple model quantitatively captures the physical mechanism underlying this enhancement of the spin-coherence time induced by displacement. The implications on spin-coherence properties during the electron displacement are discussed in the context of large-scale quantum circuits.

In the quest for large-scale quantum computing, networked quantum computers offer a natural path towards scalability. While recent experiments have demonstrated nearest neighbour entanglement for electron spin qubits in semiconductors, on-chip long distance entanglement could bring more versatility to connect quantum core units. Here, we employ the moving trapping potential of a surface acoustic wave to realize the controlled and coherent transfer of a pair of entangled electron spins between two distant quantum dots. The subsequent electron displacement induces coherent spin rotations, which drives spin quantum interferences. We observe high-contrast interference as a signature of the preservation of the entanglement all along the displacement procedure, which includes a separation of the two spins by a distance of 6 μm. This work opens the route towards fast on-chip deterministic interconnection of remote quantum bits in semiconductor quantum circuits.

While Google's Sycamore processor [1] recently ushered in the era of Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) technologies, the longer-term perspective of universal gate-based fault-tolerant quantum computing will require millions of physical qubits. Integrating a very large number of nominally identical objects, and in this case cooling them all down to cryogenic temperatures will be a major engineering challenge. Their small scale, compatibility with technologies matured over several decades by the IC manufacturing industry, as well as potential for co-integration with their classical control and readout electronics make Si spin qubits an attractive option for scaling up.

Si spin qubits are very promising to enable large scale quantum computing as they are fast, of high quality and small.However, they are still lagging behind in terms of number of qubits.Indeed there are material and integration challenges to be tackled before fully expressing their potential.

We discuss the status, challenges and perspectives of "Quantum CAD" for the design and exploration of spin qubits. We highlight the similarities and differences with conventional TCAD for micro-electronics, and focus on design, physics and variability of silicon-on-insulator qubits as an illustration.