Japanese researchers have developed a new method to make 5cm diamond slices which could be used for quantum memory. The extreme purity of the diamond allows it to store an astonishing amount of data, the equivalent of a billion Blu-Ray discs.
Diamond is one of the most promising materials for practical quantum computing systems, including memory.
A particular defect in the crystal, known as the center of nitrogen vacancies, can be used to store data in the form of superconducting quantum bits (qubits), but too much nitrogen in the diamond disrupts its storage capacity. quantum.
This meant that a compromise had to be made: Scientists had to create either large diamond slices with too much nitrogen, or ultrapure diamond slices that are too small to be of much use for data storage.
But now, researchers from Saga University and Japan’s Adamant Namiki Precision Jewelery Co. have come up with a new method to make ultra-pure diamond slices large enough for practical use.
Using this technique, the team says the resulting diamond slices are 5cm in diameter and they have such immense data density that they can, in theory, store the equivalent of a billion Blu-Ray discs.
A Blu-Ray can hold up to 25GB (assuming it’s single layer), which means that this diamond wafer should be able to hold 25 exabytes (EB) of data. The company calls these pads Kenzan Diamond.
The key is that these diamonds have a nitrogen concentration of less than three parts per billion (ppb), which makes them incredibly pure. Researchers claim these are the largest wafers with this level of purity; most of the others do not exceed 4 mm2.
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New manufacturing technique.
Diamond wafers are made by growing the crystals on a substrate material, and that material is usually a flat surface. The problem is that the diamond can crack under stress, which degrades the quality.
In the new process, the team made a relatively simple modification: the surface of the substrate is shaped like a step, which distributes the stresses horizontally and prevents it from cracking. This allows them to make larger and purer slices of diamond.
The team hopes to market these diamond plates in 2023, and in the meantime is already working on doubling the diameter to 10 cm.
Going through www-saga–u-ac-jp