It’s a special kind of thrill to receive a wafer full of semiconductor devices— especially if they have been meticulously manufactured at the nanometer scale and then flown thousands of kilometers across continents. Last year, Diraq-designed devices were fabricated at Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec) in Leuven, Belgium, and then sent across the world to Diraq’s labs in Sydney, Australia. After careful measurements, we have now reported in Nature that these devices perform quantum logic operations with consistently high fidelity. It’s firm proof that Diraq’s spin qubits can be reliably manufactured using the standard tools of the semiconductor industry. That’s big news for our team, but also for our partners, and for the long‑term goal of building utility-scale quantum computers.

My connection to this story runs deeper than the data. In 2017, I was the first PhD student at imec working on spin qubits fabricated on 300 mm wafers, the industry standard for chips in phones and laptops. I have fond memories of those early days: reimagining spin-qubit devices from the bottom up, working with the world’s leading experts on industrial fabrication to elevate device performance beyond anything achieved in academic settings. It took tremendous and continuous effort to bring the fabrication to the level it is today, and I am proud to have played a role in it. Fast‑forward to today, and I’m on the other side of the world, sending designs back to Leuven and measuring their performance in Sydney. It feels like closing a loop — only now the loop spans hemispheres.

Scale changes the game. A 300 mm process brings uniformity, large-scale monitoring and statistical information to the task of manufacturing a chip, and these capabilities simply aren’t available in a research lab. Scale lets us explore and reduce device‑to‑device variation systematically, and design systems that are robust to this variability. That’s essential for any technology that aspires to put millions of qubits on a chip. The imec process we’re using combines techniques that strike a balance between precision and agility, making them ideal for fast design iterations.

There’s also a cultural echo here that I love. The history of imec begins in 1984 with KU Leuven Professor Van Overstraeten and a few of his most talented PhD students. It is often described as an early kind of spin‑off that grew into one of the world’s largest nanoelectronics R&D hubs. It now has a global presence and a team of over 6,000 scientists and engineers. Diraq, meanwhile, spun out of UNSW Sydney in 2022, bringing decades of silicon spin‑qubit expertise into a company focused on quantum processors that are inherently compatible with the existing silicon microchip industry. Different continents, same thesis: partner tightly with academia and innovate in close collaboration with industry.

If you’ve followed silicon spin qubits, you know that chips fabricated in academic labs have shown high fidelities even when held at relatively high temperatures, and that matching those results for chips made using 300 mm foundry processes is the acid test for scalability. Our devices from imec show that we’re on the right side of that test, with consistently high‑fidelity control and robust readout. This is exactly the regime you want to be in before scaling to arrays of qubits and integrating cryogenic electronics.

This kind of progress is only possible because engineers, scientists, operators, and program managers are working in lockstep across time zones. To the imec quantum computing and fabrication teams, and to our Diraq designers and experimentalists: thank you. If you’re a student, an industry partner, or a fellow traveler excited by foundry‑first quantum, we’d love to connect.