Freeman Mason Adshead has been involved in collaborative research between the University of Manchester and the University of Melbourne to create the world’s purest silicon for use in future quantum technologies.
The recent publication in Communications Materials (a Nature journal) has garnered a lot of international media attention with its demonstration of the University of Manchester’s capability to locally purify silicon on-demand. The enriched material makes for an excellent host for spin-based technologies like quantum computing.
The incredible achievement was performed using an ion beam implantation system, which Mason worked to establish for his PhD, and was manufactured by UK-based company Ionoptika. The work was conducted as part of the NAME research programme grant, which is an inter-institutional venture between the universities of Manchester and Leeds, and Imperial College London.