Sunday, June 18, 2006

US Patent 7061008 - Quantum Computer Including Phosphorus Bearing Molecules on Hydrogenated Silicon Substrate

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7061008.pdf

Quantum computing involves the use of coherence between electrons or other elementary particles to perform numerous computation in parallel (i.e. simultaneously). At a theoretical level such quantum computers have been proposed to enable fast factorization of large numbers, which may undermine current standards of cryptography and cryptanalysis used in internet security and in communication systems used by some US and foreign intelligence agencies. So far a lack of maintaining persistence of coherence among a large number of electrons has limited the potential of quantum computing, but several corporations such as D-Wave (Canada) and Qucor (Australia) are developing and patenting new techniques to advance the state of the art in this area. This patent uses phosphorus nuclei as the elementary particle of a quantum computer which are embedded in a hydrogenated silicon substrate using scanning tunneling microscopy techniques.

Claim 1 reads:

1. A nanoscale product, comprising: an array of single phosphorus bearing molecules adsorbed onto a hydrogen patterned crystalline silicon surface; where the hydrogen patterned crystalline silicon surface comprises a mono layer of hydrogen from which hydrogen atoms have been singly desorbed in a controlled manner to expose less than or equal to two silicon dimers such that single phosphorous bearing molecules can adsorb to the exposed underlying silicon dangling bond site.