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56 DESIGN007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2023 Conclusion Rigid-flex is a hybrid solution combining rigid PCBs and flex circuits. Both rigid and flex companies can provide high-quality solu- tions for your requirements. As an OEM cir- cuit designer, design engineer, or commod- ity/purchasing manager, pay attention to your requirements. e right answer for your solu- tion depends on the design and using the cor- rect vendor. If the rigid-flex circuit you are designing has more of the features of a traditional PCB—high layer count; dense assembly requirements; HDI requirements; and blind, buried, or stacked vias—with a flex interconnect between two or more rigid sections, then a PCB vendor is probably your best bet to get your design requirements met. If your rigid-flex has more flex circuit fea- tures—tight bend radius, small feature require- ments, and thin stack requirements—and is the prominent portion of the circuit, then I would talk to a flex circuit vendor. DESIGN007 Mike Morando is director of sales and marketing for PFC Flexible Circuits, a subsidiary of OSI Electronics. Ata Syed, a field application engineer, assisted with this article. Researchers have created a quantum superpo- sition state in a semiconductor nanostructure that might serve as a basis for quantum computing. The trick: two optical laser pulses that act as a single terahertz laser pulse. A German-Chinese research team has success- fully created a quantum bit in a semiconductor nanostructure. Using a special energy transition, the researchers created a superposition state in a quantum dot in which an electron hole simultane- ously possessed two different energy levels. Such superposition states are fundamental for quantum computing. However, excitation of the state would require a large-scale free-electron laser that can emit light in the terahertz range. Additionally, this wavelength is too long to focus the beam on the tiny quantum dot. The German-Chinese team has now achieved the excitation with two finely tuned short-wavelength optical laser pulses. The team headed by Feng Liu from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, together with a group led by Dr. Arne Ludwig from Ruhr University Bochum and other researchers from China and the UK, report their findings in the journal Nature Nano- technology. The team made use of the so-called radia- tive Auger transition. In this process, an electron recombines with a hole, releasing its energy partly in the form of a single photon and partly by trans- ferring the energy to another electron. In 2021, a research team succeeded for the first time in spe- cifically stimulating the radiative Auger transition in a semiconductor. In the current project, the researchers showed that the radiative Auger process can be coherently driven: they used two different laser beams with intensities in a specific ratio to each other. Hans- Georg Babin produced the high-purity semicon- ductor samples for the experiment at Ruhr Univer- sity Bochum under the supervision of Dr. Ludwig at the Chair for Applied Solid State Physics headed by Professor Andreas Wieck. (Source: Ruhr-Universität Bochum) New Type of Quantum Bit in Semiconductor Nanostructures