C12 Quantum Electronics (Paris, France) is working with French research institute CEA-Leti to make multi-qubit chips at wafer scale based on carbon nanotubes.

C12 was founded in January 2020 and has already made quantum chips on 200mm-diameter silicon wafers using CMOS processes.

在C12’s design of qubit a carbon nanotube wire is suspended above a silicon chip containing a series of parallel wires that act as control electrodes and as a communication bus. The CNTs are composed of isotropically purified carbon-12 atoms with no carbon-14 so they have zero nuclear spin to minimize any qubit decoherence.

The two partners have started manufacturing electronic chips for C12’s planned quantum accelerators. C12’s roadmap includes a range of quantum accelerators for integration into classical supercomputers.

Money in

C12 closed a $10 million seed round of funding in June 2021 (see10美元法国量子碳纳米管启动).

“This partnership is a key milestone for our company to transfer an academic fab process to an industrial-grade semiconductor fab process, which was a major challenge,” said Pierre Desjardins, CEO and co-founder of C12, in a statement. “Thanks to CEA-Leti, we will benefit from better quality and higher volume as well as will prepare for industrialization of our devices.”