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A wireless terahertz cryogenic interconnect that minimizes heat-to-information transfer

Nature Electronics volume 8, pages 426–436 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The development of practical quantum computers probably requires error-protected quantum processors with thousands of logical qubits. Reaching this scale potentially involves millions of physical qubits and scaled interconnects. The interconnects need to connect qubits operating at cryogenic temperature with a controller at a high-temperature stage. Conventional coaxial cables introduce conductive heat loads, and thus, optical interconnects using low-thermal-conductivity fibre links have been explored. However, each absorbed photon in the low-temperature stage involves considerable heating, as well as effects such as quasiparticle excitations. Here we report a wireless terahertz cryogenic interconnect that is based on complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology and minimizes the heat-to-information transfer ratio. Our architecture consists of integrated wideband transceivers operating at a carrier frequency of 260 GHz, a hot-to-cold ingress based on passive cold field-effect transistor terahertz detector and a cold-to-hot egress using ultralow-power backscatter modulation at the cold reservoir. Our terahertz quantum interconnect technology could potentially provide high-capacity reconfigurable multichannel cryo-interconnects that operate near the fundamental limits of information transfer.

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Fig. 1: Information transfer between classical and quantum hardware.
Fig. 2: System design and calculated cryogenic performance.
Fig. 3: Measurement setup and experimental system performance.
Fig. 4: Benchmarking of systems measured and theoretical heat load against other approaches.
Fig. 5: Measured power or temperature performance and the die micrograph.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.27888858.v1 (ref. 34).

Code availability

The codes used for the calculation are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research is supported in part by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through its program Research Advanced by Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering (RAISE) Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems (TAQS) (award no. 1839159). J.W. and R.H. acknowledge support from the MIT Center of Integrated Circuits and Systems (CICS) and KUT and Jin Au Kong Fellowship. I.H. was supported by the STC Center for Integrated Quantum Materials (CIQM) NSF grant no. DMR-1231319, the NSF Engineering Research Center for Quantum Networks (CQN) awarded under cooperative agreement no. 1941583 and the MITRE Moonshot Program. The CMOS chip fabrication was supported by the Intel University Shuttle Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Microsystems Technology Laboratories, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jinchen Wang & Ruonan Han

  2. Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Jinchen Wang, Isaac Harris, Dirk Englund & Ruonan Han

  3. School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Mohamed Ibrahim

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Contributions

R.H., J.W., D.E. and M.I. initially conceived the idea of THz wireless transmission in a cryostat. I.H., J.W., R.H. and D.E. contributed to the theoretical analysis. J.W., M.I. and R.H. developed the backscattering technique and the overall system architecture. J.W. contributed to the chip specifications, design and room-temperature electrical characterization. I.H. and J.W. prepared the cryogenic experimental setup. J.W. performed the wireless up- and down-link demonstrations. All authors contributed to the discussion of the experimental results and the writing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jinchen Wang, Dirk Englund or Ruonan Han.

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Nature Electronics thanks Masoud Babaie, John Martinis and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Sections 1–5 and Figs. 1–4.

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Wang, J., Harris, I., Ibrahim, M. et al. A wireless terahertz cryogenic interconnect that minimizes heat-to-information transfer. Nat Electron 8, 426–436 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01355-9

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