Single-electron pump in a quantum dot array for silicon quantum computers


 It is necessary to load single electrons into individual quantum dots (QDs) in an array for implementing fully scalable silicon-based quantum computers. However, this single-electron loading would be impacted by the variability of the QD characteristics, and suppressing this variability is highly challenging even in the state-of-the-art silicon front-end process. Here, we used a single-electron pump (SEP) for loading single electrons into a QD array as a preparation step to use electrons as spin qubits. We used parallel gates in the QD array as a SEP and demonstrated 100-MHz operation with an accuracy of 99% at 4 K. By controlling the timing of a subsequent gate synchronously as a shutter, we found that the jitter representing electron transfer was less than 10 ns, which would be acceptable for a typical operation speed of around 1 MHz for silicon qubits.