May 28, 2024 -- New York University’s Center for Quantum Information Physics and the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have established a collaboration to develop superconductor and semiconductor materials, which could be used to enhance performance of electronics, quantum sensors, and computing capabilities, for manufacturing.

Under this new collaboration, NYU’s Center for Quantum Information Physics (CQIP) and the University of Copenhagen’s Novo Nordisk Foundation Quantum Computing Programme (NQCP), part of the Niels Bohr Institute, will explore the viability of superconductor-semiconductor quantum materials.

“We are excited to join forces with our colleagues at NQCP to study semiconductor and superconductor materials development to provide a direct path for the production of quantum chips,” says NYU Physics Professor Javad Shabani, director of CQIP.

“Our mission at NQCP is to enable the development of fault tolerant quantum computing for life sciences, and as a part of the program we are looking at different paths to building quantum processor hardware,” adds University of Copenhagen Professor Peter Krogstrup, CEO of NQCP. “One promising direction for compact and high-speed quantum processing is based on hybrid semiconductor-superconductor materials. Therefore, we welcome this cross-Atlantic collaboration with CQIP, where the team has deep experience in studying these hybrid systems.”

The future of quantum computers depends on the development of full-scale quantum chips. Quantum computing can make calculations at significantly faster rates than can conventional computing. This is because conventional computers process digital bits in the form of 0s and 1s while quantum computers manipulate quantum bits (qubits) to tabulate any value between 0 and 1—through a process known as entanglement—exponentially lifting the capacity and speed of data processing.

However, such potential has yet to be realized. In solid-state platforms (those based solely on semiconductors), this is, in part, due to challenges incorporating superconductivity—carrying electricity in an energy-efficient way—into semiconductors—the microchips and integrated circuits at the foundation of today’s electronic devices.

The successful development of superconductor-semiconductor quantum materials could lead to the speeding up of calculations, the creation of new quantum circuit functionalities, and generating ways to integrate these breakthroughs with complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) processes used in building energy-efficient microprocessors, memory chips, image sensors, and other technologies.