Will Superconducting Transistors Help Quantum Computers?

Despite all the glamorous promises made about quantum computing, it’s hard to make the argument that today’s quantum computers hold a candle to the sheer practicality of classical computers, especially when qubits need to be cuddled at cryogenic temperatures inside a cryostat.

This is worsened by the problem that regular semiconductor transistors do not really appreciate these same cryogenic temperatures, creating an awkward interfacing problem for the controlling electronics.

Now a new pitch here is to create superconducting transistors that will happily work at temperatures near absolute zero.

In addition, JJ-based field effect transistors (JJFETs) are used, with this 2025 paper by [Yusheng Xiong] et al.

Here S–Transistors claims that they are now able to manufacture JJFETs at scale, which would be another major breakthrough that could bring quantum computing just a little bit closer.