NORDTECH consortium to use $27M in federal funds for projects

The Northeast Regional Defense Technology Hub (NORDTECH) will use $27 million in U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) funding for various projects, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) announced Sept. 18.  NORDTECH describes itself as a regional consortium of government labs, defense companies, academic institutions, and technology-manufacturing organizations in New York state and one of eight hubs involved in the U.S. Microelectronics Commons program, per a separate announcement on Sept. 18. NORDTECH’s five founding members — who comprise the hub’s leadership team and governance committee — include the New York Center for Research, Economic Advancement, Technology, Engineering, and Science (NY CREATES) in Albany; the University at Albany College of Nanotechnology, Science, and Engineering (CNSE); Cornell University; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI); and IBM, as outlined in the NORDTECH announcement. The funding will help NORDTECH to boost semiconductor and other technology research & development (R&D) and workforce training at upstate New York universities and research institutions, Schumer’s office noted. This funding comes from the $2 billion CHIPS for America Defense Fund which Schumer helped establish in his CHIPS & Science Law. His office says the effort helped secure upstate’s spot in competing to become one of the first Microelectronic Commons Hubs last year.

Projects awarded funding

The U.S. Department of Defense selected four of NORDTECH’s projects based in New York that are focused on quantum research and development to receive federal funding. Quantum Error Correction Qubit They include the Superconducting Quantum Error Correction Qubit, which was awarded more than $8.5 million. NY CREATES is the lead research institution, and Cornell University, Syracuse University, New York University, and the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) are among the partner research institutions. NY CREATES and partners in academia, industry, and government will co-develop technologies necessary to demonstrate scalable quantum-error correction, using new materials, innovative quantum circuits, and qubit control schemes.  Those involved will explore innovative processes that expand the limits of qubit performance at the academic labs, with a view to “hasten the lab-to-fab transition.” The Cornell Nanofabrication Facility will offer vetted processes on dedicated 100mm tools that researchers can utilize.  The team will deliver a superconducting process design kit (PDK), leveraging the tightly controlled fabrication processes at the 300mm wafer scale. This project will “democratize access to scalable, high performance qubit fabrication, enabling faster innovation by the broader community,” as described in the Schumer announcement. NITRIDER They also include the Nitride RF Next-Generation Technology (NITRIDER) project, which was awarded more than $8.1 million. Cornell University is the lead research institution, and RPI is among the partner research institutions. High-speed gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) have “revolutionized” defense radar and communication systems, despite delivering only 1/10th of the radio frequency (RF) output power for which this semiconductor family is capable.  In this project, Cornell University and its team will unleash the dormant 90 percent output power using novel and patented nitride HEMTs and aluminum nitride (AlN) substrates.  While taking these two next-generation nitride RF transistor technologies from lab-to-fab, the NITRIDER program will employ specially constructed workforce-development modules to develop large signal models, new processes, and research design kits (RDKs) for E-Band and C- Band (radio frequencies from 60GHz-90GHz and 2.4GHz-5GHz, respectively) MMICs, or monolithic microwave integrated circuits which perform functions such as power amplification, to improve radar and communication systems. QUPICS In addition, more than $8.2 million was awarded to the Quantum Ultra-broadband Photonic Integrated Circuits and Systems (QUPICS) project. AIM Photonics and Cornell University are the lead research institutions, and Cornell, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Columbia, and AFRL are among the partner research institutions. The QUPICS team, led by the American Institute for Manufacturing Integrated Photonics (AIM Photonics) and Cornell University, will develop the first 300mm foundry fabrication platform for quantum technologies which will span from the ultraviolet to the infrared.  QUPICS will specially address the foundry gap for trapped atom/ion and neutral ion quantum technologies incorporating electrical, broadband photonic and electro-optic devices into a single broadly available technology offering.  QUPICS will develop and incorporate passive photonics, active components, and laser sources from the ultraviolet to the infrared geared to the use of quantum technologies. Integrated systems spanning this broad wavelength range are critical for a variety of photonics-heavy quantum systems for commercial and DoD priority applications in quantum sensing, networking, computation and position navigation and timing (PNT).  In later years, QUPICS will open to multi project wafer (MPW) runs and will be actively searching for partners from government laboratories, academia, and businesses. HQN The federal government also awarded more than $2.4 million for the heterogeneous quantum networking project. RIT is the lead research institution, and the partner research institutions include AFRL Information Directorate, Yale University, Duke University, AIM Photonics, and NY CREATES. The Rochester Institute of Technology and partners plan to realize a heterogeneous quantum network (HQN) that connects ion-based qubits with superconducting and photonic-based qubits.  Qubits are quantum bits that relay more information than the binary 1s and 0s of today’s computer chips. Enabling the networking of non-identical qubit types expands the usefulness of remote quantum entanglement, which is currently based on homogeneous qubit types.  With a heterogeneous network, different qubit types can be used for different applications (storage, sensing, and/or processing) while still being interconnected. Such a network would advance the warfighter’s access to position, navigation, timing, communications, and computational information.