A silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor electron spin-orbit qubit

The silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) material system is a technologically important implementation of spin-based quantum information processing. However, the MOS interface is imperfect leading to concerns about 1/f trap noise and variability in the electron g-factor due to spin–orbit (SO) effects. Here we advantageously use interface–SO coupling for a critical control axis in a double-quantum-dot singlet–triplet qubit. The magnetic field-orientation dependence of the g-factors is consistent with Rashba and Dresselhaus interface–SO contributions. The resulting all-electrical, two-axis control is also used to probe the MOS interface noise. The measured inhomogeneous dephasing time, $$T_{{\mathrm{2m}}}^ \star$$ , of 1.6 μs is consistent with 99.95% 28Si enrichment. Furthermore, when tuned to be sensitive to exchange fluctuations, a quasi-static charge noise detuning variance of 2 μeV is observed, competitive with low-noise reports in other semiconductor qubits. This work, therefore, demonstrates that the MOS interface inherently provides properties for two-axis qubit control, while not increasing noise relative to other material choices. As the performance of silicon-based qubits has improved, there has been increasing focus on developing designs that are compatible with industrial processes. Here, Jock et al. exploit spin-orbit coupling to demonstrate full, all-electrical control of a metal-oxide-semiconductor electron spin qubit.