Quantum technologies promise improvements to a vast range of everyday gadgets, including more reliable navigation and timing systems, more secure communications, more accurate healthcare imagining through quantum sensing, and more powerful computing. These transformative technologies work by using principles such as 'entanglement' and 'superposition'. So, it is now time for engineering to harness the potential of quantum mechanics and bring these applications into reality.

This course starts with an introduction of the basic principles that govern quantum technologies. It then moves to some of the basics in designing and operating advanced semiconducting and superconducting devices, quantum software, and the fundamentals of quantum circuits and their applications for quantum sensing and quantum computing. Find out more here: https://youtu.be/3EP0nM6Gj9c 

4 lectures per week and a timetabled laboratory session

ENG4099 Quantum Electronic Devices 4

None

60% Written Exam

20% Written Assignment, including Essay: Device design portfolio.

20% Report: 2 Laboratory reports

This course aims to introduce students to the design and operation of various advanced quantum electronic devices. From semiconductor devices to cryogenic electronics superconducting qubits, students will be introduced to the fundamentals of quantum technologies and their applications in quantum sensing and quantum computing.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ understand the fundamentals of quantum mechanics and apply it to quantum technologies, including using semiconductor E-k bandstructure diagrams to design electronic devices;

■ design semiconductor heterostructures and exploit the properties of doping;

■ design semiconducting devices ranging from transistors (bipolar, high electron mobility, field-effect) to cryogenic quantum devices (e.g. single electron transistors, cryoCMOS);

■ describe and design aspects of solid-state quantum circuits (spin and superconducting qubits) as well as design and describe circuit logic operation of quantum computers;

■ use quantum control and correlation to optimise sensing elements; and

■ critically relate basic concepts in quantum physics and of simple quantum circuits to state-of-the-art quantum technology as well as being able to identify and analyse the ethical impact of quantum technologies.

Students must attend the degree examination and submit at least 75% by weight of the other components of the course's summative assessment.

Students must attend the timetabled laboratory classes.