We demonstrate that a lightly strained germanium channel (ϵ / / = - 0.41 %) in an undoped Ge/Si0.1Ge0.9 heterostructure field effect transistor supports a two-dimensional (2D) hole gas with mobility in excess of 1 × 10 6 cm2/Vs and percolation density less than 5 × 10 10 cm-2. This low disorder 2D hole system shows tunable fractional quantum Hall effects at low densities and low magnetic fields. The low-disorder and small effective mass (0.068 m e) defines lightly strained germanium as a basis to tune the strength of the spin-orbit coupling for fast and coherent quantum hardware.

A hole bilayer in a strained germanium double quantum well is designed, fabricated, and studied. Magnetotransport characterization of double quantum well field-effect transistors as a function of gate voltage reveals the population of two hole channels with a high combined mobility of (Formula presented.) and a low percolation density of (Formula presented.). The individual population of the channels from the interference patterns of the Landau fan diagram was resolved. At a density of (Formula presented.) the system is in resonance and an anti-crossing of the first two bilayer subbands is observed and a symmetric-antisymmetric gap of (Formula presented.) is estimated, in agreement with Schrödinger-Poisson simulations.

Excitons are promising candidates for generating superfluidity and Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) in solid-state devices, but an enabling material platform with in-built band structure advantages and scaling compatibility with industrial semiconductor technology is lacking. Here we predict that spatially indirect excitons in a lattice-matched strained Si/Ge bilayer embedded into a germanium-rich SiGe crystal would lead to observable mass-imbalanced electron–hole superfluidity and BEC. Holes would be confined in a compressively strained Ge quantum well and electrons in a lattice-matched tensile strained Si quantum well. We envision a device architecture that does not require an insulating barrier at the Si/Ge interface, since this interface offers a type II band alignment. Thus the electrons and holes can be kept very close but strictly separate, strengthening the electron–hole pairing attraction while preventing fast electron–hole recombination. The band alignment also allows a one-step procedure for making independent contacts to the electron and hole layers, overcoming a significant obstacle to device fabrication. We predict superfluidity at experimentally accessible temperatures of a few Kelvin and carrier densities up to ~6 × 10¹⁰ cm⁻², while the large imbalance of the electron and hole effective masses can lead to exotic superfluid phases.

Valence band holes confined in silicon quantum dots are attracting significant attention for use as spin qubits. However, experimental studies of single-hole spins have been hindered by challenges in fabrication and stability of devices capable of confining a single hole. To fully utilize hole spins as qubits, it is crucial to have a detailed understanding of the spin and orbital states. Here we show a planar silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor-based quantum dot device and demonstrate operation down to the last hole. Magneto-spectroscopy studies show magic number shell filling consistent with the Fock–Darwin states of a circular two-dimensional quantum dot, with the spin filling sequence of the first six holes consistent with Hund’s rule. Next, we use pulse-bias spectroscopy to determine that the orbital spectrum is heavily influenced by the strong hole–hole interactions. These results provide a path towards scalable silicon hole-spin qubits.