Driving Quantum Innovation: Veeco’s Advances in Materials Engineering for the Next Era of Computing

Driving Quantum Innovation: Veeco's Advances in Materials Engineering for the Next Era of Computing

News | Mar 06, 2026

Quantum computing is poised to transform industries by tackling problems that remain unsolvable for even the most powerful supercomputers. From secure communications and financial modeling to drug discovery and climate modeling, the potential is enormous. Yet, building quantum devices requires materials and process control far beyond traditional semiconductor manufacturing. Precision, cleanliness, and flexibility are not just desirable-they are non-negotiable.

Veeco has been at the forefront of enabling this transformation, leveraging decades of leadership in epitaxy and deposition to support researchers and technology developers pushing the boundaries of quantum. With its latest product advances-including the GEN20-Q™ Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system, integrated atomic layer deposition (ALD)/MBE solutions, and the adjustable and compact GENxplor® R&D MBE and Fiji® Plasma-Enhanced ALD tools-Veeco is redefining how the industry approaches quantum materials engineering.

Meeting the demands of quantum materials

GEN20-Q: Next-Generation MBE System

Unlike conventional semiconductors, quantum devices must sustain delicate states of superposition and entanglement. This puts extreme pressure on material quality. Defects, impurities, or rough interfaces can dramatically shorten qubit lifetimes or increase error rates. Researchers are also exploring multiple approaches-including superconducting qubits, photonic qubits, and spin qubits-each of which requires different material stacks.

The challenge: no single device structure has yet emerged as the industry standard. To keep pace, equipment must be both ultra-clean and highly flexible. This is the design philosophy behind Veeco's GEN20-Q platform.

The GEN20-Q is a next-generation 4-inch MBE system purpose-built for quantum materials research and development. At its core is a proven high-performance growth chamber, capable of handling substrates up to 100 mm in diameter. Its vertical reactor geometry ensures uniform epitaxial layers, while advanced pumping pathways, 20% more liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling, and passivated chamber walls deliver the ultra-high-purity environment required for defect-free structures.

Key Innovations in Quantum Materials Engineering

Customizable multi-module cluster design - Up to four growth modules can be integrated into a single cluster, enabling direct process integration of superconductors, semiconductors, complex oxides, and photonics.

Ultra-high vacuum (UHV) hand-off stations - Allow seamless transfer between MBE and other deposition systems without exposure to atmosphere, preserving pristine material interfaces.
EPI-Trend™ data logging - Advanced data capture and integration with M3 SQL databases for traceability and process optimization.
SuperNova™ heater - Achieves substrate temperatures up to 1400 °C for advanced cleaning and surface reconstruction.

These capabilities make GEN20-Q uniquely suited to help labs and foundries accelerate their path to high-performance, low-error quantum devices.

Integrated ALD and MBE

Hybrid MBE-ALD Deposition for Quantum Devices

Quantum device structures are increasingly complex, often requiring heterogeneous stacks that combine epitaxial layers with conformal dielectric or interface films. In addition, photonic qubits-built from single photons routed, interfered, and detected-impose a different set of constraints. Waveguide propagation loss, interface scattering, and inhomogeneous broadening of emitters are all tightly linked to epitaxial quality and interface roughness.

Maintaining Purity and Interface Integrity

To address these challenges, Veeco integrates its Fiji XT ALD systems directly with MBE clusters. Featuring in-vacuum wafer transfer and hybrid materials deposition, this MBE-ALD integration enables researchers to build complete device stacks-without breaking vacuum-combining the atomic precision of ALD with the crystalline quality enabled by MBE.

This flexibility allows users to explore new combinations of materials for superconducting circuits, photon-manipulating structures, or spin qubits-all while maintaining the purity and interface integrity quantum demands

Fast R&D learning enables scalability

Fiji® Plasma-Enhanced ALD in Quantum Research

Early-stage labs need compact tools that offer serious film quality with minimal overhead. Fiji® plasma-enhanced ALD brings conformal coatings, interface control, and high-k/low-k options into the same R&D workflow. In quantum contexts, Fiji's utility spans tunnel-barrier formation, surface passivation, isolation dielectrics, and optical claddings-these specialized, low-refractive-index layers help confine, guide, and protect qubits as they travel through circuits. With Veeco's integrated approach, Fiji slots into UHV-linked clusters to keep surfaces pristine between epitaxy and ALD steps, which is key to enabling cleaner interfaces and lower defectivity in qubit-critical regions.

GENxplor R&D MBE System for Advanced Development

The GENxplor R&D MBE system is an advanced, high-performance research and development platform that lets teams cost-effectively establish recipes, screen materials, and prove device concepts before transitioning to production. GENxplor R&D's open architecture enables cutting-edge research on a wide variety of materials and is directly scalable to the quantum-optimized GEN20-Q cluster.

Partnering for success
Quantum leaders increasingly prioritize suppliers who can deliver ultra-high-purity tools and scale with them from lab to production. As one example, Quantum Foundry Copenhagen highlighted Veeco's reliability, understanding of ultra-high purity, and ability to scale as key reasons for partnering-signals that matter as customers look beyond point tools toward full-stack materials platforms they can build on.

Veeco's installed base reflects the same momentum: nearly two dozen ALD systems and multiple GEN20-Q MBE systems are already in the field addressing quantum workloads-evidence that integrated epitaxy and ALD, backed by production-minded engineering, are resonating with R&D and early manufacturing teams alike.

Built for the quantum decade

The next decade of quantum will be defined by materials engineering: cleaner superconducting interfaces, lower-loss photonic stacks, and hybrid structures that marry the best of each modality. Veeco's quantum-optimized portfolio gives researchers and device engineers a coherent platform to pursue that agenda with fewer compromises and tighter data feedback.

Superconducting Qubits: Clean Films and Interfaces

For superconducting qubits, key variables to be addressed include the need for ultra-clean superconducting films, atomically controlled barriers, and defect-suppressed interfaces. The GEN20-Q's cleanliness stack (passivation, pumping, cryo), SuperNova™ high-temperature prep, and UHV-linked Fiji ALD directly target these variables, while EPI-Trend provides the data backbone for continuous improvement.

Photonic Qubits: Low-Loss Heterostructures

For photonic qubits, the emphasis is on low-loss heterostructures and interface smoothness across III-V and related systems. Multi-module clustering, uniform epitaxy up to 100 mm, and ALD claddings enable rapid, reproducible sweeps of waveguide and resonator designs-without uncontrolled interface changes from air exposure. Using MBE to grow BaTiO3 (BTO) and SrTiO3 (STO) produces high-quality, single-crystal, and stoichiometric perovskite layers and offers the proven best Pockels effect-a parameter critical for high-speed photonic circuits, fiber-optic communication, and Q-switching in lasers.

Scaling from R&D to Production

For both types of qubits, GENxplor and Fiji deliver optimal R&D capabilities, while the GEN20-Q provides a quantum-tuned platform for scaling devices and integrating multiple materials technologies on a single cluster. That combination shortens the path from "first qubit" to statistically robust wafers and prepares teams for production-class reliability without abandoning the flexibility that the R&D environment provides. Furthermore, Veeco possesses significant expertise in equipment design and is equipped to scale processes from research and development through to production.

In this fast-evolving field where precision, cleanliness, and flexibility determine the slope of the learning curve, Veeco's systems are designed to move quantum from promising prototypes to repeatable devices, at scale.