Methods for creating qubits

The infographic shows five icons and summary sentences depicting five of the key ways to create qubits: superconducting circuits, trapped ions, neutral atoms, solid-state spins and photons.

Want to create a qubit? Then you need systems with different possible quantum states. Here, scientists turn to electrons, photons, ions, atoms and circuits.

Find out more about five key fields of qubit research in our infographic: superconducting circuits, trapped ions, solid-state spins, neutral atoms and photons.

No method for qubit creation is perfect; each comes with its own challenges, such as stability or scalability. And once qubits are made, we still need to be able to manipulate and read the data, so there are many aspects that need to come together to build practical quantum computers.

Date:
12 March 2026
Credit:
Jeffery Prine/OIST

Copyright OIST (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, 沖縄科学技術大学院大学). Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

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