A silicon wafer is like cookie dough. Heat it in an oven, and tiny raisins appear inside — defects in the crystal lattice that can emit single photons. These "raisins" are called color centers, and they are needed for quantum computers and secure communication.

The authors of the study investigated how these defects are born during silicon annealing. They heated samples at different temperatures and for different durations, then counted how many and what kinds of color centers appeared. It turned out that one type of defect, the T-center, is especially sensitive to heating time. Moreover, different color centers compete with each other: if one forms, another may run out of "building material."

A separate finding is new glowing centers that have never been seen before. Their signals are stable, so they could be useful in quantum devices. The most valuable part: all this can be done in standard silicon factories that already produce ordinary microchips. Quantum technology is no longer a craft: it's becoming mass production.

And finally, back to cookies. If we learn to precisely control the "baking" time and temperature, we can produce millions of identical quantum sources on a single wafer. Then the quantum internet will become as commonplace as the regular one.