Media Tip: Resurrecting niobium for quantum science
Argonne National LaboratoryFor the past 15 years, niobium has been considered a mediocre material for qubits, which are the carriers of quantum information. But now a group at Stanford University and the University of Chicago has demonstrated a way to create niobium-based qubits that rival the state-of-the-art for their class. By restructuring and reengineering how niobium is incorporated in a component called the Josephson junction, the group developed a qubit that could maintain information for 62 millionths of a second, 150 times longer than its best-performing niobium predecessors.