8 April 2026
ARQUE Systems, a spin-off from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University, aims to bring about a breakthrough in quantum computing with a scalable architecture. A key advantage: the processor is based on conventional semiconductor technology. The first system is currently being set up in Jülich.
Cutting-edge research focused on practical applications
ARQUE Systems will be represented at the Forschungszentrum Jülich booth at HANNOVER MESSE 2026. General information about the exhibition, the projects on display and Forschungszentrum Jülich's stand can be found on the central landing page for the fair.
All components are already on site. After completion of the testing phase, ARQUE Systems' first system is set to go into operation at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC). Its quantum computing infrastructure, JUNIQ, provides users from science and industry with access to state-of-the-art quantum computers from various manufacturers.
Quantum computers promise enormous potential for solving societally relevant yet highly demanding computational tasks-for example, the simulation of materials and chemical processes or tackling complex optimization problems that are typically beyond the reach of classical digital computers.
"For most of these applications, stable systems with thousands to millions of qubits would be desirable. We are still a long way from that, but it is precisely this scalability that is the strength of our approach," explains physicist Prof. Hendrik Bluhm.
With the spin-off ARQUE Systems, which he founded together with colleagues from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University, he leverages proven methods from the semiconductor industry.
"This approach has several advantages: we can build on established materials and manufacturing processes. At the same time, our spin qubits are smaller, more robust against disturbances, and can in principle be integrated in large numbers on a single chip," emphasizes Dr. Markus Beckers, CEO of ARQUE Systems.
"In the long term, millions of qubits could fit on a chip the size of a fingernail - significantly more than with any other approach realized so far," says the former innovation consultant and mechanical engineer.
Electron shuttle for advanced quantum processors
A key challenge here is the so-called entanglement of quantum bits, or qubits for short. This coupling of quantum states is an essential prerequisite for the enormous computing power of quantum computers. However, to achieve entanglement of qubits, they must be very close together-which is hardly feasible for large numbers of qubits due to spatial constraints.
On the ARQUE Systems chip, the qubits-which are themselves only about one hundred nanometers in size-can be moved using a patented process. Like on an assembly line, the electrons, which serve as the qubits' information carriers, can be moved along so-called shuttling paths over distances of tens of thousands of nanometers without losing the sensitive quantum states. This makes it possible to entangle qubits even when they are physically far apart.
The underlying principle was developed in close collaboration between Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University. The technology is still at an early stage of development. ARQUE Systems' first quantum processor comprises five qubits - state of the art for semiconductor-based quantum processors.
Other parts of the system are also in-house developments. "All key components come from North Rhine-Westphalia and have been developed here up to the prototype stage," explains Markus Beckers.
The first prototypes of the processor chip were manufactured at the Helmholtz Nano Facility (HNF) - the Helmholtz Association's cleanroom complex at Forschungszentrum Jülich. The current version was developed in collaboration with development partner Infineon.
Cryogenic integrated circuits for more qubits
The Peter Grünberg Institute - Integrated Computing Architectures (PGI-4) at Forschungszentrum Jülich is focusing on the scaling bottleneck, the so-called "wiring apocalypse," since every qubit is currently controlled from the outside via its own individual lines. This should be solved by highly efficient cryogenic control electronics, which will be directly integrated with quantum chips from ARQUE Systems. To this end, researchers at PGI-4 are collaborating with the spin-off IceCirc GmbH to develop special chips similar to those used in smartphones.
