The discovery of material for quantum computing from copper

quantum computing will play crucial role in the future

Since the discovery of superconductor, scientists have been researching many materials in addition to fabricate it close to zero temperature. This is because of superconductor could be utilized when it reaches its critical temperature. However, this material is not yet utilized for quantum computing. The breakthrough then is answered by scientists from Boston College, Fazel Tafti, who told Inverse about their succeed in discovering a new material that will be able to perform quantum state in the future.

What Tafti and his team made is material called quantum liquid spin which has the ability of keeping quantum information, implying in the capability to be used in quantum computing. The material is copper iridium binary metal oxide with chemical formula Cu2IrO3.

But, what is it quantum computing?
The term quantum was firstly coined in the early 1900s by Max Planck because of his discovery of discontinuity or quanta in electromagnetic waves. Planck proposed that the energy of electromagnetic symbolized to E equals to the multiplication of the velocity of the photon and the photon itself. Photon is defined as particle that moves exactly the same as lights approximately 300,000 km per second.

In classical computing, the data is defined as the electron within the material. However, current material that has been used for computing is metal or ceramics. According to IBM, quantum computing employs the quantum principle which is the interaction among particles separated by the uncertainty principle or superposition. Subsequently, when delivering the information, quantum computing uses the quantum phenomena creating faster process of analyzing, delivering and processing data or information.

Unlike classical computers, quantum computing employs electron that can move in speed of light.
Therefore, if each bit requires value 1 or 0 in classical computer, the quantum computing works based on qubits which represents both a 1 and 0 at the same time because of the uncertainty principle.

What to do with the new material?
With the superposition principle, the quantum computing actually requires material which has certain properties in order to support the quantum process. The material must be similar like superconductor which has almost zero resistance, while it also can be employed near room temperatures.

Interestingly, since the discovery of graphene which has hexagonal structure provides broaden perspective. Based on many studies, the hexagonal structure or honeycomb structure gives significant impact to the electrical and mechanical properties. This is also the reason why the scientists synthesized the material in hexagonal structure. On the other hand, the hexagonal structure creates the electron in spinning properties and provides magnetic properties.

Magnetic property provides less friction among particles implying to the presence of almost-zero resistance. But more importantly, the properties of electrons regarding the magnetism is never freezing although the temperature close to absolute zero. The almost-zero resistance can be implemented in the future quantum computers as it can provide the ability to maintain qubits which are considered as units containing quantum information.

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[1] Image is downloaded from www.newscientist,com