Purer-than-pure silicon solves problem for quantum tech (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Jonathan Webb
Science reporter, BBC News

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.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28632263

[sir pball]

1. This isn't really novel at all...I'm half surprised nobody thought of this before.

It was one of the first techniques for separating uranium during the Manhattan Project, literally just a scaled-up version of this ubiquitous piece of lab equipment. It's not a huge mental leap to figure out that you could repurpose an old MS to make the tiny amounts of Si-28 needed.

Of course, "t is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry 'I could have thought of that' is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn't, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too."

[eppur_se_muova]

2. I meant to add the comment "the Calutron is reinvented!" but forgot ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calutron