nextnano GmbH, based in Munich, Germany, is a spin-off from the Walter Schottky Institute of the Technische Universität München. It was founded in 2012 to develop software for the simulation of electronic and optoelectronic semiconductor nanodevices. In particular, the focus is on the simulation of the quantum mechanical properties of such devices. Examples include nanotransistors, LEDs, laser diodes, photodetectors, quantum dots, nanowires, quantum cascade lasers, resonant tunneling diodes, solar cells and qubits. The nextnano software is used by more than 250 customers and in more than 35 countries. To date, the company has 10 employees.

nextnano is consortium member of the EU project UltraFastNano which aims to demonstrate Electronic Flying Qubits. The concept is similar to a photonic quantum computer but here electrons are used instead of photons. The qubit is realized as a single-electron transistor and is composed of a single-electron emitter and a single-electron detector. The electrons fly through a Mach-Zehnder interferometer which consists of a tunable electron beam splitter (tunnel-coupled wire) and an Aharonov-Bohm ring. During flight, the electron is manipulated using electrostatic gates. The electron encodes the quantum information as the probability which one of the two paths are taken.

Applications:

• Modeling of semiconductor based Qubits