IYQST-horiz-rgb400px.png

The engine-room of quantum innovation

4 Feb 2025 | written by Joe McEntee

Engaging a new generation of industry end-users alongside its established scientific customer base, attocube is supporting applied R&D and technology innovation across the quantum supply chain.

attocube-LAB.png

A collaborative mindset: Product integration is one of attocube’s core competencies, with many of the firm’s physicists and engineers having been end-users of attocube products during their PhD and postdoctoral research in quantum science.

Quantum science is on a roll, it seems, as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ) gathers pace following the official opening ceremony at UNESCO headquarters in Paris earlier this month. One hundred years after the initial development of quantum mechanics by German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, the IYQ heralds a worldwide celebration, endorsed by the United Nations (UN), and “observed through activities at all levels aimed at increasing public awareness of the importance of quantum science and applications”.

The UN milestone comes at an intriguing juncture for the quantum sector. Advances in fundamental quantum science and applied R&D are accelerating on a global scale, harnessing the exotic properties of quantum mechanics – entanglement, tunnelling, superposition and the like – to open up practical applications in quantum computing, quantum communications and quantum metrology. 

Structurally, a “quantum ecosystem” is also taking shape, with established tech firms – among them Google, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft – and a wave of ambitious start-up companies – the likes of PsiQuantum, Quandela and Sparrow Quantum – seeking to turn their applied research endeavours into commercial opportunities across industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, finance, healthcare and telecoms.

Understanding the quantum end-user

At the heart of the emerging quantum supply chain is attocube, which is aligning its product development roadmap to deliver the R&D and manufacturing tools needed to support the scale-up and commercialization of next-generation quantum technologies. “We’ve positioned ourselves as the ‘engine-room’ for quantum customers, supporting their cutting-edge research and product innovation in quantum science and technology,” explains Holger Thierschmann, project leader in attocube’s Innovision team (a technology and market foresight unit that focuses on disruptive innovation and new markets).

Holger-Thierschmann.png

Quantum DNA: “What we are very good at is carefully questioning the customer, listening to what they want to do, and helping them to get it done,” says Holger Thierschmann.

Strategically, the attocube mission is to major in engineering excellence across a specialist product offering that guarantees bulletproof reliability for academic and industrial customers alike. By extension, the operational priority is to foster vendor-customer relationships that, more often than not, move beyond the transactional into the realm of collaborative R&D and co-development.

A collaborative mindset is especially important when it comes to attocube’s interactions with the many quantum technology companies that have spun out from academia over the past decade – engaging their R&D scientists and engineers on the one hand, while talking “the same language” as their new breed of industrialization and manufacturing specialists who want ready-made cryogenic or nanopositioning solutions built to custom specifications. 

“Product integration is one of our core competencies,” says Thierschmann. “We are very good at understanding what our customers need and, with appropriate customizations, can give them the building blocks to perform cutting-edge experiments in a research or product development setting.”

This enabling role – unlocking the creativity, ingenuity and imagination of quantum customers – is reflected in the complementarity of the attocube product portfolio. Think compact and low-vibration closed-cycle cryostats (with low-heat-generation compressors); precision-motion components (such as nanopositioners and displacement-measuring interferometers) to align, operate and test advanced quantum components/subsystems; microscopes for nanoscale analytics; and a supporting suite of measurement electronics and instrumentation. 

Equally significant is the versatility of those products across the range of operating conditions needed to minimize noise and make quantum effects observable and accessible in the first place. Anything from ambient to ultralow temperatures, from low to ultrahigh vacuum, as well as within tightly constrained magnetic fields to maintain the delicate quantum states and processes – think single-photon sources, trapped ions or photonic integrated circuits – within the core systems of quantum computers and quantum communication networks.

From academic endeavour to industrial mainstream

Inevitably and inexorably, the centre of gravity in the quantum sector is shifting from academia to industry. As advances in fundamental quantum science seed at-scale knowledge transfer, technology innovation and early commercial opportunities, attocube’s product roadmap must track the same trajectory. Of course, that transition out of the research lab and into industry applications means a whole new set of product metrics must come into play – among them scalability, reliability, manufacturability, cost/performance, energy consumption and operational expenditure.  

“This is where our product management and development teams can excel,” notes Thierschmann. “The job is to listen to customers’ evolving requirements and provide them with industry-ready cryogenic and nanopositioning solutions that will ultimately enable quantum computing and quantum networking technologies to be deployed at-scale.” 

What’s more, attocube is very much alive to the potential of game-changing new products. “In other words, product innovation that opens doors to completely new markets,” Thierschmann adds. “Maybe even addressing questions that the customer hasn’t even articulated yet.”
 

Quantum-Integration2400.png

Quantum integration: Cryogenic photonic integrated circuits (PICs) will be key to the scale-up and industrialization of quantum technologies. Above: attocube’s Photonic Probe Station positions optical fibres at cryogenic temperatures for the testing of PICs destined for applications in quantum computing and quantum networking systems.

A case study in this regard is the attoCMC, a compact and rack-mountable cryostat for in-field deployment that attocube launched in the spring of last year. Based on patented compression technology, the portable cryostat – system footprint is akin to a piece of aircraft hand luggage – offers a base temperature of 2.3 K with low power consumption (1 kW). 

Innovative vacuum management, combining conventional pumps with cryopumps, allows for horizontal mounting of the cooler within the attoCMC cryostat unit, further minimizing space requirements. A movable cold-head, meanwhile, facilitates the rapid integration, installation and exchange of cold electronics, optimizing the testing process for developers and scientists.

All told, the attoCMC delivers an order-of-magnitude increase in energy efficiency for the cryogenic subsystem, giving quantum technology companies access to enhanced cooling capabilities for single-photon sources and superconducting detectors – key enabling technologies for distributed quantum computing and networking systems. 

“With the mantra of out of the lab and into the field,” notes Thierschmann, “the attoCMC R&D and product strategy teams put the focus – from initial prototype through to commercial launch – on industrialization, manufacturability and broad user accessibility.” 

The quantum talent pipeline

Legacy looms large, of course, and after 20 years of working with quantum scientists across the academic world, quantum is hard-wired into attocube’s “collective DNA” – a concentration of domain knowledge and expertise that spans the company’s R&D function through product development and engineering to the sales, business development and technical support teams. 

“Many of our staff physicists and engineers were end-users of attocube products – as well as our rivals’ – during their PhD and postdoctoral research in quantum science,” notes Thierschmann. Crucially, all that first-hand user knowledge and competitive intelligence has migrated in-house with them – an invaluable feedback loop for continuous product improvement.

As attocube grows as a company, however, the challenge is to remain in sync with the evolving requirements of the quantum tech industry – and along all coordinates. “It isn’t just about our product and innovation roadmap for quantum,” notes Thierschmann. “It’s about the company culture – who we are and how we think.” 

There’s been a shift in recruitment strategy, for example, to hire senior staff with an engineering-centric mindset, ensuring that the attocube manufacturing team is well placed to meet the quantum industry’s growing requirements for scale; also to optimize the company’s engagement with its own materials and components supply chain. 

Conversely, attocube also wants to stay true to where it came from: looking at things from the end-user perspective, engaging in granular requirements-gathering and, ultimately, building everything around the customer – whether in academia or industry. “What we are very good at is carefully questioning the customer, listening to what they want to do, and helping them to get it done,” concludes Thierschmann. ”Critical questioning is a skill on a meta level and positions us for long-term ‘quantum advantage’ as the quantum sector progresses from early-stage applications towards mainstream tech industry of tomorrow.”

Joe McEntee is a scientific editor based in South Gloucestershire, UK.


Solutions for Quantum Applications

high precision components to align, operate and test advanced quantum systems

Cryogenic Nanopositioners >

Piezo-based nanopositioners for cryogenic environments.

Single Photon Sources >

Cryogenic cooling for industrialized brilliant light sources for quantum computing and quantum information processing.

attoDRY800xs >

Compact, standalone optical cryostat with unobstructed optical access for quantum optics experiments.

Cryogenic Probing of PICs >

Sophisticated platforms for alignment of optical fiber probes in testing of photonic integrated circuits & quantum computing chip.

attoDRY800 >

Low-vibration cryostat integrated into an optical table with unobstructed optical access for quantum optics experiments.

Testing of QC Components >

Analysis of mechanical, electrical and optical properties of quantum components before integration into quantum computer systems.

Compact Mobile Cryogenics >

Ultra-compact, complete 4K cryostat system. Designed for easy integration, OEM supply and industrial applications.