Diamond Thin Films Make It Possible to Produce Quantum Technologies at Foundry Scale.
Quantum diamond technologies
Quantum computing pioneers IonQ, Element Six, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have made a major advancement by announcing a novel method that turns laboratory-grade diamond film into a component that can be mass-produced in data centres of the future. Presented at IonQ’s Quantum World Congress 2025, this breakthrough produces high-quality, quantum-grade diamond thin films that work with both traditional silicon substrates and semiconductor foundries worldwide. In the end, this development leverages the more than $1 trillion invested in the semiconductor industry to overcome a significant scaling challenge.
Scaling Diamond Thin Films: The Foundry-Compatible Process
The production of these high-quality, high-yield diamond thin films is essential for the industrial production of diamond devices. Building on decades of utilising the extreme qualities of diamond, Element Six, a division of the De Beers Group, offered knowledge dating back to the early years of synthetic diamond research in the 1950s.
A precise layering sequence is at the heart of the new technique:
- Growth: Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) is used to produce a high-purity diamond seed on a silicon wafer.
- Detachment and Bonding: The seed crystal is separated from a diamond film, which is only a few hundred micrometres thick, and bonded onto a new silicon carrier.
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Through this approach, silicon’s established, reasonably priced processing infrastructure is combined with diamond’s remarkable electrical characteristics, extended spin coherence times, and colour-centre defects to create a stack. Crucially, the bonding process makes use of common wafer-level methods, which means that the films can be handled with current clean-room equipment and that specialized diamond reactors are not required. The group also makes use of AWS’s cloud-based simulation tools to forecast defect densities and quickly optimise deposition parameters. With a yield of over 90%, the films are homogeneous and flawless, satisfying the exacting purity and crystallographic requirements needed for quantum devices.
Core Capabilities: Foundry Compatibility and Heterogeneous Integration
The limits of earlier custom, R&D-scale production techniques are solved by the ability to bond quantum-grade diamond sheets onto conventional substrates like silicon and silicon nitride. This method enables two crucial capabilities:
Foundry Compatibility
For the first time, the same equipment and procedures that drive the global semiconductor industry may be used to create synthetic diamond quantum devices. This makes it possible to produce diamond-based electronics on a large scale, including as sensors, quantum memory, and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). These foundry-compatible films “change the game” in photonic interconnects, compute processors, and quantum networking, enabling the mass production of reliable, high-performance systems, according to Niccolo de Masi, Chairman and CEO of IonQ.
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Heterogeneous Integration
This feature enables designers to create a single system-level package out of several separate parts, frequently composed of various materials. Heterogeneous integration combines the proven elements of the traditional semiconductor industry with the state-of-the-art quantum performance of diamond. For more effective control, diamond chip-based quantum memory, for instance, can be combined with functionalised substrates that have electrical control lines. This technology will eventually make it possible to include quantum memories into intricate photonic integrated circuits that include detectors, switches, and modulators composed of well-established materials like silicon nitride.
Enabling Modular Quantum Architectures and Sensing
Building datacenter-scale quantum machines through the modular networking of smaller, specialised quantum processing units (QPUs) is the main goal of IonQ’s long-term plan, which is modelled after the development of classical supercomputing. Interconnects that can sustain low latency while preserving delicate quantum states are necessary for the network fabric.
These high-speed photonic interconnects are crucial for maintaining entanglement across long distances, and diamond thin films offer the perfect medium for them. Photons carrying entanglement between QPUs can be stored and retrieved with high fidelity using silicon vacancy (SiV) defects in diamond, which function as quantum memory. Quantum information can be routed with little loss using the scalable network that results. This platform can also house conventional control circuits directly on the silicon carrier, enabling tight integration that lowers power consumption and signal latency, two important aspects of large-scale quantum processes.
Diamond’s Evolving Role
Quantum sensing is also significantly impacted by the industrialisation of quantum-grade diamond. Commercial sensor arrays can now incorporate diamond’s nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centres, which are used in magnetometry. Defence and space organisations are interested in these sensors because they are essential for delivering accurate inertial navigation in settings without GPS. IonQ’s position as a full-stack quantum platform encompassing computation, networking, and sensing is cemented by its recent acquisitions, which include Lightsynq, which specializes in quantum interconnects, and Vector Atomic, which specializes in atomic-scale sensors.
From industrial drilling equipment in the 1970s, when its hardness and thermal conductivity transformed the oil and gas sector, to its current position at the core of quantum technology, diamond’s adaptability is demonstrated. These days, the material is employed to create the fastest photonic interconnects, accurate sensors, and the most coherent quantum memories.
This substance has a broad range of commercial potential:
- Automotive: To enhance thermal management, electric car batteries can be equipped with diamond-based heat spreaders.
- Consumer electronics: In loud settings, diamond-enhanced microphones may produce crisper sounds.
- Quantum Networks: For vital applications like cloud computing and financial trading, integrating diamond quantum memory into data centre backbones may enable ultra-low latency communication and impenetrable encryption.
This innovation represents a turning point for diamond as an industrial semiconductor by bridging the gap between mass-produced silicon technology and specialized quantum materials.
