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It seems like over the past few years, Quantum is being talked about more and more. We’re hearing words like qubits, entanglement, super position, and quantum computing. But what does that mean … and is quantum science really that big of a deal? Yeah, it is.

It’s because Quantum science has the potential to revolutionize our world. From processing data to predicting weather, to picking stocks or even discovering new medical drugs. Quantum, specifically quantum computers, could solve countless problems.

Continue reading “Unlocking the Power of Quantum Computing” »

Calcium oxide is a cheap, chalky chemical compound commonly used in the manufacturing of cement, plaster, paper, and steel. But the material may soon have a more high-tech application.

UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering researchers and their collaborator in Sweden have used theoretical and computational approaches to discover how tiny, lone atoms of bismuth embedded within solid calcium oxide can act as qubits — the building blocks of quantum computers and quantum communication devices.

These qubits are described in Nature Communications (“Discovery of atomic clock-like spin defects in simple oxides from first principles”).

Lockheed Martin has opened a new engineering facility, laboratory, and demonstration center in Huntsville, Alabama, to advance US security capabilities.

The $18-million, 122,000-square-foot (11,334 square meters) site will house 500 employees who will take on upgrade, readiness, and sustainment works for the US Army’s Black Hawk helicopters, as well as the Missile Defense Agency’s Command and Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC) system.

It will also be responsible for the modeling and simulation framework for the Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Move over, graphene. There’s a new, improved two-dimensional material in the lab. Borophene, the atomically thin version of boron first synthesized in 2015, is more conductive, thinner, lighter, stronger, and more flexible than graphene, the 2D version of carbon. Now, researchers at Penn State have made the material potentially more useful by imparting chirality — or handedness — on it, which could make for advanced sensors and implantable medical devices. The chirality, induced via a method never before used on borophene, enables the material to interact in unique ways with different biological units such as cells and protein precursors.

The team, led by Dipanjan Pan, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering, published their work — the first of its kind, they said — in ACS Nano.

“Borophene is a very interesting material, as it resembles carbon very closely including its atomic weight and electron structure but with more remarkable properties. Researchers are only starting to explore its applications,” Pan said. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to understand the biological interactions of borophene and the first report of imparting chirality on borophene structures.”

Imaging the hot turbulence of aircraft propulsion systems may now be possible with sturdy sheets of composite materials that twist light beams, according to research led by the University of Michigan and Air Force Research Laboratory.

New materials engineered to be both stiff and heat-insulating could revolutionize thermal insulation applications in electronics.

Scientists have successfully engineered materials that are both rigid and effective at insulating against heat. This extremely rare combination of attributes offers significant potential for various applications, including the creation of new thermal insulation coatings for electronic devices.

“Materials that have a high elastic modulus tend to also be highly thermally conductive, and vice versa,” says Jun Liu, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. “In other words, if a material is stiff, it does a good job of conducting heat. And if a material is not stiff, then it is usually good at insulating against heat.

A research team has developed a novel “pulse-shaped” light method to enhance the electrical conductivity of PbS quantum dot solar cells. This new technique, which replaces the lengthy traditional heat treatment process, generates substantial energy at regular intervals, significantly improving efficiency and addressing defects caused by light, heat, and moisture exposure. PbS quantum dots, known for their wide absorption range and low processing costs, are now more viable for commercial use. This advancement is expected to facilitate the broader application of quantum dot technology in optoelectronic devices. Credit: SciTechDaily.com.

A research team headed by Professor Jongmin Choi from the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology has successfully developed a “PbS quantum dot” capable of quickly improving the electrical conductivity of solar cells. This collaborative effort involved Professor Changyong Lim of the Department of Energy Chemical Engineering at Kyungpook National University, led by President Wonhwa Hong, and Professor Jongchul Lim from the Department of Energy Engineering at Chungnam National University, under the leadership of President Jeongkyoum Kim.

The team identified a method to enhance electrical conductivity through the use of “pulse-shaped” light, which generates substantial energy in a concentrated manner at regular intervals. This method could replace the heat treatment process, which requires a significant amount of time to achieve the same result. This approach is expected to facilitate the production and commercialization of PbS quantum dot solar cells in the future.

Learn what you always wish you knew about Google’s algorithms.

The team spent years perfecting an intricate process for manufacturing two-dimensional arrays of atom-sized qubit microchiplets and transferring thousands of them onto a carefully prepared complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. This transfer can be performed in a single step.

“We will need a large number of qubits, and great control over them, to really leverage the power of a quantum system and make it useful. We are proposing a brand new architecture and a fabrication technology that can support the scalability requirements of a hardware system for a quantum computer,” says Linsen Li, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and lead author of a paper on this architecture.