Chance discovery brings quantum computing using standard microchips a step closer

A study to prod an antimony nucleus (buried in the middle of this device) with magnetic fields became one with electric fields when a key wire melted a gap in it. An accidental innovation has given a dark-horse approach to quantum computing a boost. For decades, scientists have dreamed of using atomic nuclei embedded in silicon--the familiar stuff of microchips--as quantum bits, or qubits, in a superpowerful quantum computer, manipulating them with magnetic fields. Now, researchers in Australia have stumbled across a way to control such a nucleus with more-manageable electric fields, raising the prospect of controlling the qubits in much the same way as transistors in an ordinary microchip. "That's incredibly important," says Thaddeus Ladd, a research physicist at HRL Laboratories LLC., a private research company. "This could potentially change the game for nuclear qubits in silicon."