According to CCTV News, reporters learned from China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) today that Chinese scientists have made a key breakthrough in the field of stable isotope enrichment, successfully achieving the first autonomous mass production of silicon-28 isotopes with an abundance of over 99.99%. The key indicators of the product have reached the international advanced level. This marks that China has taken substantial steps in building an autonomous, controllable, collaborative, and efficient stable isotope industry pattern.
Silicon is a non-metallic element, and there are three isotopes in natural silicon: silicon-28, silicon-29, and silicon-30, with silicon-28 accounting for 92.2%. This isotope can greatly reduce environmental noise interference in quantum computing and is known as 'the purest silicon in the world'. However, another stable isotope in natural silicon, silicon-29, can interfere with quantum computing. Therefore, to minimize interference, the abundance of silicon-28 must be increased from 92.2% to over 99.99%.
Jiang Hongmin, President of the Nuclear Industry Physical and Chemical Engineering Research Institute of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), explained that the purification of silicon-28 does not rely on material reactions to transform silicon-29 into silicon-28. Instead, it separates the three isotopes like sifting beans, with silicon-28 enriched on one side and silicon-29 and silicon-30 on the other. The total amount remains unchanged, but the abundance of each component changes. According to reports, in addition to quantum computing, ultra-high abundance silicon-28 also has important application prospects in frontier fields such as advanced semiconductor manufacturing, high-end navigation, and metrological benchmarking. The team from the Nuclear Industry Physical and Chemical Engineering Research Institute of CNNC, which achieved this breakthrough, has previously successfully produced 12 elements including molybdenum, tellurium, and nickel, as well as 26 stable isotopes, continuously promoting the engineering and industrialization of stable isotope separation technology.
