Quantum Electronic Devices
@ UNSW

Welcome to the web page of the Quantum Electronic Devices group in UNSW's School of Physics

The Quantum Electronic Devices group (@QEDUNSW) is part of the Condensed Matter department in UNSW's School of Physics in the heart of Sydney. We are a key laboratory in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Future Low Energy Electronics Technologies.

Our research examines the fundamental properties of low dimensional systems realised in advanced semiconductor devices, and the development of new semiconductor and superconducting devices.

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Explainer videos

Atomic layer deposition

The 'wet dilution' fridge

Dipping samples in liquid helium


Current Opportunities

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News (more updates on @QEDUNSW)

18 Mar 2024
Congratulations to Jonathan Wendoloski on being awarded the School of Physics Prize for 4th Year Theoretical Physics - well done Jono!
12 Feb 2024
Congratulations to Daniel Halverson and Pavitraa Hathi on being awarded $15,000 CSIRO Honours Student Scholarships to undertake research projects in the QED group.
26 Aug 2023
We have multiple undergraduate research projects available for highly motivated students to come and see what it is like to work in a cutting edge research laboratory, on topics ranginfg from experimental studies of the Quantum Hall effect at ultra-low temperatures through to artificial quantum matter and high speed operation of spin qubits. Summer vacation scholarships are available, as well as in-term Taste of Research projects. We are especially encouraging women to apply. Please see QedJoinUs for details.
27 July 2023
Congratulations to Scott Liles and Joe Hiller on being awarded a UNSW Faculty of Science Translation Impact Seed grant to develop new hardware for controlling ultra-fast hole spin qubits, with partner Diraq.
4 July 2023
Our latest collaboration with the amazing theory teams at UNSW is now on the preprint archive: Abhikbrata Sarkar, Zhanning Wang, et al, Electrical operation of planar Ge hole spin qubits in an in-plane magnetic field https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.01451
9 May 2023
Prof Hamilton is awarded a $3.8M Inaugural Industry Laureate Fellowship by the Australian Research Council, to work with industry partner Diraq on developing silicon CMOS quantum computer technology that uses both electrons and holes. Although it's called a fellowship, it is really recognition of the amazing team at UNSW, and all our collaborators.
15 Mar 2023
Congratulations to Aaquib Shamim, winner of the $500 People’s Choice Award, for his poster "Pauli Spin Blockade and g-factor Anisotropy in Hole Si CMOS Double Quantum Dot" at the Sydney Quantum Academy's 'Quantum Australia' conference https://twitter.com/QEDUNSW/status/1633664732111720448?s=20.
18 July 2022
Welcome to new QED group member, Dr. Joe Hillier.
15 July 2022
Matt's paper on using electric fields to control spin splitting in a solid state spin-dependent mass spectrometer has been published:
M. J. Rendell, S. D. Liles, A. Srinivasan, O. Klochan, I. Farrer, D. A. Ritchie, and A. R. Hamilton,
Gate voltage dependent Rashba spin splitting in hole transverse magnetic focusing, Phys. Rev. B 105, 245305 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.105.245305 and https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.01223
5 Apr 2022
Sydney Quantum Academy PhD scholarships now available for projects in the QED group: https://www.sydneyquantum.org/program/sqa-phd-scholarships/
26 Mar 2022
Congrats to Honours student Olivia Kong, and Dr. Matthew Rendell, whose work with our colleagues at TUDelft studying the fractional quantum Hall effect of holes in germanium quantum wells has been featured on the cover of Applied Physics Letters, and chosen as an 'Editor's Pick':
M. Lodari, O. Kong, M. Rendell, A. Tosato, A.Sammak, M. Veldhorst, A. R. Hamilton, and G. Scappucci,
Lightly-strained germanium quantum wells with hole mobility exceeding one million, Applied Physics Letters 120, 12210 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0083161
1 Jan 2022
A big year ahead. Welcome to summer scholarship students Jacinta May, Krittika Kumar, Jeremy George and Marcus To, as well as new PhD students Isaac Vorreiter, Abhay Gupta and Aaquib Shamim; Jeremy and Krittika will also be doing Honour research projects in the group.
20 Dec 2021
A great way to finish the year! Congratulations to Scott Liles and colleagues for their paper on the unexpected effects of non-uniform strain on single hole quantum dots published as an Editor’s choice in Physical Review B - https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.104.235303.
25 Nov 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Matthew Rendell on being awarded the Dean's Award for outstanding Ph.D. Theses
12 Aug 2021
A new approach to making ultra-low noise quantum devices from a single crystal: Yonatan's new paper in Applied Physics Letters, selected as an Editor’s pick, reports a new way to make transistors in which the metal gate electrode is grown as part of the single crystal heterostructure. This eliminates unwanted charge noise and scattering from surface states, and allows ultra-shallow, high mobility 2D electron systems and stable quantum devices:
Y. Ashlea Alava, D. Q. Wang, C. Chen, D. A. Ritchie, O. Klochan, and A. R. Hamilton, High electron mobility and low noise quantum point contacts in an ultra-shallow all-epitaxial metal gate GaAs/AlxGa1−xAs heterostructure, Appl. Phys. Lett. 119, 063105 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0053816
6 Aug 2021
Congratulations to Aydin and Daisy: their paper in Physical Review X, reporting that electrons in a transistor can behave like a super-viscous fluid, has been selected for a feature article in the American Physical Society’s Physics Magazine: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/115
1 May 2021
We are hiring! We have an opening for a postdoctoral research fellow to work on experimental measurement of hole spin qubits (Hole_Spin_Qubits_2021_Advert.pdf). Spin-3/2 holes are cool because you can manipulate their magnetic spin just with an electric field, and they have lots of interesting properties that electrons don't. Some details on the position are here: https://external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/501827/postdoctoral-fellow. One of our recent works is here https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.04985, and others are linked below:
2 Apr 2021
Two new papers on the theory of hole spin qubits:
Zhanning and colleagues' new results overturn the conventional wisdom that fast operation implies reduced lifetimes in spin qubits, and suggest group IV hole spin qubits are an ideal platforms for ultra-fast, highly coherent scalable quantum computing.
Z. Wang, E. Marcellina, A.R. Hamilton, J. H. Cullen, S. Rogge, J. Salfi and D. Culcer,
Optimal operation points for ultrafast, highly coherent Ge hole spin-orbit qubits, npj Quantum Inf. 7, 54 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-021-00386-2

This is complemented by a second paper in PRB reports which investigates the properties of germanium hole spin qubits:
LA Terrazos, E Marcellina, Zhanning Wang, SN Coppersmith, Mark Friesen, AR Hamilton, Xuedong Hu, Belita Koiller, AL Saraiva, Dimitrie Culcer, Rodrigo B Capaz,
Theory of hole-spin qubits in strained germanium quantum dots, Physical Review B 103, 125201 (2021). https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10320 and https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.103.125201
17 Mar 2021
Our new study of hydrodynamic flow of an electron liquid in a perfect pipe is on the archive.
This is really neat - fluid flow has major practical consequences, from lab on a chip devices to rocket design. At low temperatures the motion of electrons in clean solid, which we usually think of as individual particles bouncing around off impurities and thermal vibrations, is transformed into the collective motion of a viscous fluid. The fluid viscosity is a universal and intrinsic property of the electron system. However this universal nature is hard to detect experimentally, as hydrodynamics is mainly detected through the interaction of the fluid with the sample boundaries (think of a rough pipe vs a smooth pipe), and this is an unknown quantity that varies between experiments. In their preprint Aydin and Daisy eliminated the boundary problem by creating electronic devices with perfectly smooth walls, and then reintroduced viscous flow by engineering obstacles into the boundaries. This made it possible to clearly observe a transition to hydrodynamic electron motion, driven by decreasing temperature (which is expected) and also by increasing magnetic field (which is not). The precision of the new experiments allowed the electron quasiparticle lifetime to be measured over a wide temperature range, revealing an unexpected deviation from existing theoretical models.
Aydın Cem Keser, Daisy Q. Wang, Oleh Klochan, Derek Y. H. Ho, Olga A. Tkachenko, Vitaly A. Tkachenko, Dimitrie Culcer, Shaffique Adam, Ian Farrer, David A. Ritchie, Oleg P. Sushkov, Alexander R. Hamilton, Geometric control of universal hydrodynamic flow in a two dimensional electron fluid, https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.09463.
4 Jan 2021
Karina's paper reporting a new way to detect the spin-gap, a pre-requisite for topological Majorana Zero Modes, has just appeared in Nature Communications! Congratulations on a beautiful experiment and theory collaboration.
K. L. Hudson, A. Srinivasan, O. Goulko, J. Adam, Q. Wang, L. A. Yeoh, O. Klochan, I. Farrer, D. A. Ritchie, A. Ludwig, A. D. Wieck, J. von Delft & A. R. Hamilton, New signatures of the spin gap in quantum point contacts,
Nature Communications 12, 5 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19895-3
18 Dec 2020
Congratulations to three undergraduates who have won six week summer research scholarships: Cory Aitchison and Nick Zaunders won Sydney Quantum Academy Undergraduate Research Scholarships, and Krittika Kumar won a FLEET scholarship. See what they got up to here: https://twitter.com/FLEETCentre/status/1366878577740800003
4 Nov 2020
Our new results showing how to dramatically improve the reproducibility of quantum devices (needed if we are going to scale them up to complex circuits) has just been published:
A. Srinivasan, I. Farrer, D. A. Ritchie, and A. R. Hamilton, Improving reproducibility of quantum devices with completely undoped architectures, Appl. Phys. Lett. 117, 183101 (2020). https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.04119v1 and https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0024923.
27 Oct 2020
Summer Vacation Scholarships are available in the QED group for high achieving undergraduate students. Details are here SummerVacationScholarships2020.
August 2020
Congratulations to Karina Hudson, who has been awarded a highly-competitive 3 year Sydney Quantum Academy Fellowship (equivalent to a DECRA).
23 Jul 2020
Congratulations to Daisy Wang on her paper in Applied Physics Letters reporting a new approach to making lateral surface superlattices for artificial crystals in conventional electronic transistors: DQ Wang, D Reuter, AD Wieck, AR Hamilton, and O Klochan: "Two-dimensional lateral surface superlattices in GaAs heterostructures with independent control of carrier density and modulation potential", Applied Physics Letters 117 (3), 032102 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0009462
15 Jul 2020
Applications now open for the 2020 Sydney Quantum Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships. Closing date: Tuesday 11 August 2020. The QED team offers projects in topological systems and quantum computing.To apply, click here. Contact alex.hamilton@unsw.edu.au and cc: c.bloise@unsw.edu.au for further information.
13 May 2020
Sydney Quantum Academy Postgraduate PhD Scholarships The QED team currently offers PhD projects in topological systems and quantum computing. quantum_advert.png For more information and to apply, click here. Contact alex.hamilton@unsw.edu.au and CC: c.bloise@unsw.edu.au for further information.
29 Feb 2020
Another Rapid Communication in Physical Review B: With David Neilson and our collaborators in Europe we have a new paper on excitonic superfluidity in semiconductor devices: "Experimental conditions for observation of electron-hole superfluidity in GaAs heterostructures", Samira Saberi-Pouya, Sara Conti, Andrea Perali, Andrew F. Croxall, Alexander R. Hamilton, Francois M. Peeters, David Neilson. A preprint is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.06631
24 Feb 2020
Congratulations to Dr. Liles upon the award of his Ph.D. thesis “Single hole spins in silicon quantum dots”.
21 Feb 2020
First paper of the year: Congratulations to Elizabeth Marcellina, whose paper reporting a new signature of topological physics in classical physics properties has just been been accepted for publication as a Rapid Communication in Physical Review B: "Signatures of quantum mechanical Zeeman effect in classical transport due to topological properties of two-dimensional spin-3/2 holes", E. Marcellina, Pankaj Bhalla, A. R. Hamilton, Dimitrie Culcer. The preprint is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.11439
11 Feb 2020
Scott Liles is at ICONN 2020 presenting a talk on Strong electric control of a single hole g-factor
22 Jan 2020
We're excited to be installing our new dilution fridge, and have already made some cutting edge breakthroughs in an effort to deepen the understanding of holes. Link.
20 Dec 2019
Congratulations to Dr. Karina Hudson, who has just been awarded a Dean’s Award for her Outstanding PhD Thesis.
11 Dec 2019
Well done again to Matthew Rendell, who won a best poster award at the FLEET annual workshop.
4 Dec 2019
New funding for QED research. Alex Hamilton, with collaborators Daniel Loss in Basel, Giordano Scappucci in TU Delft, and David Ritchie in Cambridge, have won an ARC Discovery Grant to investigate hole spins for quantum information applications.

Topic revision: r137 - 19 Mar 2024, AlexHamilton