Pasqal is coordinating a €50m European pilot line designed to move neutral atom quantum components from laboratory development towards repeatable industrial production.
Q-PLANET brings together 28 research organisations, manufacturers, technology companies, and universities across 11 EU member states. The programme is co-funded by the Chips Joint Undertaking and participating national and regional authorities.
An initial three-year phase began in July within a six-year framework partnership, with a second stage expected to concentrate on user access, commercial adoption, and further improvement in manufacturing maturity. The pilot line will design, fabricate, assemble, and test components for neutral atom computing, sensing, and communications.
Early work covers chip-based lasers operating at 461nm, 698nm, 795nm, and 1,013nm, together with atom chips and microfabricated vapour cells for timing and field-sensing applications. Three iterative design, fabrication, and test cycles are intended to raise the technologies from readiness level four towards level six.
Neutral atom systems use precisely controlled atoms as quantum elements, while lasers and optical equipment handle trapping, positioning, excitation, and measurement. The architecture has demonstrated strong scaling potential, but current machines rely on complex assemblies whose performance can vary between laboratories and individual builds.
Q-PLANET will address that variability through process design kits and assembly design kits containing documented manufacturing rules, interfaces, component libraries, and packaging information. Designers can then work within defined process limits instead of rebuilding the fabrication route around every experiment.
The model follows established semiconductor practice. Process design kits connect circuit design with a foundry’s physical capabilities, while assembly design kits extend the same discipline into packaging and integration, where optical alignment, thermal behaviour, materials, and interconnect can determine whether a component works outside controlled laboratory conditions.
Europe has begun opening similar infrastructure for advanced semiconductor packaging. An open chiplet assembly design route developed through IHP gives engineers standardised information for moving multi-die systems into fabrication, reducing dependence on private, project-specific knowledge.
Pasqal will lead work on 1,013nm laser components and integrate 795nm and 1,013nm devices into neutral atom quantum processing units. Other partners will contribute cleanroom fabrication, photonics, control electronics, packaging, testing, software interfaces, and application development.
Silicon Austria Labs is leading a package covering 461nm chip-based lasers, aluminium nitride modulators, electronics, assembly, and CMOS-integrated drive systems, while VTT in Finland is responsible for packaging work including silicon nitride fabrication, fibre attachment, active chip packaging, and assembly design-kit development.
Technical University of Denmark will provide cleanroom and foundry capability for passive photonic elements, and the wider consortium includes universities, national laboratories, specialist quantum companies, Safran Electronics & Defence, Thales, and ONERA. Such breadth is unavoidable because a functioning quantum machine combines atomic physics with semiconductor, optical, mechanical, electronic, software, and vacuum engineering.
Industrialisation depends on more than reducing component size. Laser wavelength stability, linewidth, phase noise, optical loss, thermal behaviour, packaging accuracy, vacuum compatibility, control electronics, and long-term reliability all influence system performance, and a device proven once under expert supervision may still be unsuitable for repeatable production.
Testing will therefore carry equal weight with fabrication. The programme needs measurement methods that compare components across sites and production batches, along with calibration and control frameworks that allow system builders to integrate hardware without redesigning the surrounding electronics and software for every iteration.
Computing, sensing, timing, navigation, Earth observation, and secure communications impose different constraints on the same underlying technologies. A quantum processor installed beside high-performance computing infrastructure can tolerate equipment that would be impractical in a portable field sensor or an atomic clock intended for deployment outside a laboratory.
A shared manufacturing base can support several applications, improving equipment utilisation and giving suppliers a broader route to market. It also reduces the duplication that occurs when national programmes build isolated facilities without generating enough demand to sustain any one production line.
The €50m budget remains modest beside a commercial semiconductor fab, but Q-PLANET is not targeting conventional chip volumes. Its task is to establish controlled processes, increase component readiness, and give companies access to fabrication capability they could not justify building independently.
Success will depend on whether organisations beyond the founding consortium can design against the published processes, obtain components within predictable timescales, and integrate them without extensive re-engineering. A pilot line becomes industrial infrastructure only when it supports repeatable external use.
Quantum investment has often concentrated on qubit counts and laboratory demonstrations, while packaging yield, test coverage, supplier qualification, documentation, and maintainability receive less attention. Q-PLANET places those disciplines at the centre of Europe’s neutral atom programme, where they must sit if the technology is to move from experiment to product.
