Researchers make air-stable, ultrathin superconductors, for more scalable quantum devices

Per MIT News, researchers have overcome a major hurdle in quantum computing: ultrathin superconductors, which are just one or a few atoms thick, have been nearly impossible to manufacture at scale because they oxidize instantly in air. The team solved it by growing niobium diselenide—an ultrathin superconducting material—in a thin gap between a graphene layer and silicon dioxide, so the graphene shields the delicate material while it crystallizes into a uniform sheet larger than an inch. The technique, described in Nature, could enable more compact and efficient quantum computing hardware, as well as ultrasensitive quantum detectors for communications and cosmology.

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