Representing Spain’s largest cleanroom research infrastructure for quantum device prototyping, the upgraded facility integrates nanoscale fabrication and metrology toolsets designed to transition pre-production quantum hardware into industrial pilot lines.

 

The facility upgrade was funded through an investment exceeding €6 million ($6.88M USD) sourced from Spain’s PERTE Chip program (funded via NextGenerationEU) and the Complementary Plan for Quantum Communications under CSIC’s Interdisciplinary Thematic Platform on Quantum Technologies (QTEP+). Technological capabilities added to the cleanroom include an EBPG 5150Plus electron-beam lithography system, combined scanning electron microscopy and electron-beam lithography (SEM/EBL) instruments, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) systems. The suite supports nanometer-scale patterning and characterization for quantum processing units (QPUs), photonic integrated circuits, and quantum key distribution (QKD) components.

The cleanroom expansion forms part of CSIC’s broader national strategy, anchored by the newly established QuARC-CSIC (Quantum Advanced Research Center) to consolidate 36 research groups across 21 institutes. QuARC-CSIC advances research across four pillars: quantum computing/simulation, communications, sensing/metrology, and information theory. To complement hardware fabrication, QuARC’s algorithmic initiatives include hardware-algorithm co-design for fermionic quantum simulation, recently backed by a €1.5 million ($1.7 million USD) European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant to build co-designed atomic quantum simulators for many-body physics.