The research consortium includes three German partners - Universities of Dortmund and Stuttgart and Technical University of Munich - and four teams from Japan - Tsukuba University, National Institute of Material Science and Japanese Atomic Energy Agency. The Stuttgart team is famous by the pioneering work on detection and manipulation of internal states (quantum states) of single atoms in diamond.

This technology will be used for testing novel data processing protocols. Quantum logic circuits use intrinsic quantum mechanical properties of single nitrogen atoms in diamond for solving certain computation problems much faster than best existing processors. Japanese teams are world leading experts in growth of synthetic diamond and single atom doping technologies.

The project is founded within new German-Japanese research initiative "Nanoelectronics" aiming to strengthen collaboration between two countries in strategically important field of nanotechnology. The project is co-ordinated by Dr. Fedor Jelezko, University of Stuttgart, and Professor Junichi Isoya, Tsukuba University.