To address the problem of increasing power demand of modern supercomputers, hybrid architectures have been recently proposed, where conventional metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices are combined with low-energy dissipation devices based on superconductor (S) materials. It has been in fact estimated that, even after taking into account the cooling costs needed for their operation at liquid helium temperature (~ -269 Celsius), hybrid computing architectures can still process information at lower energy costs and higher speeds compared to more conventional systems purely based on CMOS technology. 

One of the major problems of hybrid semiconductor/superconductor architectures is the current lack of a good interface between the superconducting and semiconducting components. This is mainly due to the fact that devices used in superconducting logics to date have been mainly controlled via current (or magnetic flux), whilst semiconductor devices are voltage-driven. 

Researchers in our team, however, recently made the fundamental discovery that specific types of superconducting devices can also be controlled via the application of a voltage signal, and have thus realized the first superconducting equivalent of a conventional CMOS transistor. The recent demonstration of the possibility of controlling the state of a superconducting device via an applied voltage also implies other advantages which these voltage-controlled superconducting devices offer in terms of their reduced size (scalability), number of devices that can be driven from the device output signal (fan-out) and robustness against magnetic noise.

Based on these recent discovery and preliminary experimental studies from our group, the SuperGate research program aims therefore at developing and delivering a prototype of superconducting logics with performance comparable or better than that of any existing state-of-the-art superconducting logics in terms of switching speed and energy dissipation, but superior in terms of scalability, interfacing with CMOS circuits and stability against magnetic perturbation.

Our proposed technology has the potential to become a core component in future energy-efficient supercomputers and quantum hardware. 

Work packages

• WP1 Fabrication, design and optimization of EF-Tron devices
• WP2 Origins and mechanisms of superconducting FE
• WP3 Dynamic characterisation of EF-Tron devices
• WP4 SuperGate logics: circuits and devices
• WP5 Technology transfer and exploitation
• WP6 Coordination and management
• WP7 Ethics

This project has received funding by  FET Open Grant of the European Union under grant agreement No. 964398.