Abandoning Perfection for Quantum Technologies
Our technological preference for perfection can only lead us so far: as traditional transistor-based electronics rapidly approach the atomic scale, small amounts of disorder begin to have outsized negative effects. Surprisingly, one of the most
promising pathways out of this conundrum may emerge from current efforts to embrace defects to construct quantum devices and machines that enable new information processing and sensing technologies based on the quantum nature of electrons and atomic
nuclei. Recently, individual defects in diamond, silicon carbide, and other wide-gap semiconductors have attracted interest as they possess an electronic spin state that can be employed as a solid-state quantum bit at room temperature.
These systems have a built-in optical interface in the visible and telecom bands, retain their coherence over millisecond timescales, and can be polarized, manipulated, and read out using a simple combination of light and microwaves. With these
well-characterized foundations in hand, we discuss merging electronic, photonic, magnetic, and phononic degrees of freedom to develop coherent atomic-scale devices for transducing information to create multifunctional quantum technologies. We present
demonstrations of gigahertz coherent control, single nuclear spin quantum memories, entangled quantum registers, and advances in extending the quantum coherence in both commercial and custom CVD-grown electronic materials for emerging applications
in science and technology.