Ultra-thin superconducting ink could be used in quantum computers

A superconducting ink that tin beryllium printed onto surfaces successful a single-molecule-thick furniture could beryllium utile for the gathering of circuits for quantum computers. The tungsten disulfide ink is much unchangeable than different superconducting inks and it is simpler to make, which bodes good for aboriginal applications.

When a material is superconductive, energy tin walk done it with zero resistance, making it an extraordinarily businesslike mode to transmit energy. Superconductive materials besides person peculiar magnetic properties, but they thin to beryllium hard to marque and they interruption down erstwhile exposed to aerial oregon to temperatures excessively acold from implicit zero.

Xiaoyu Song and Leslie Schoop astatine Princeton University and their colleagues produced the tungsten disulfide ink utilizing a process called chemic exfoliation. They started retired with a worldly made of alternating layers of tungsten disulfide and potassium. “Imagine that you person a crepe barroom – you person each these crepes stacked connected apical of each different and successful betwixt you person the pick filling. The tungsten disulfide is the crepe and the potassium is the filling,” says Song. When the layered worldly is placed into diluted sulphuric acid, it is akin to dunking a crepe barroom successful water: the potassium dissolves away, and lone the bladed layers of tungsten disulfide remain.

When the acerb and remnants of potassium were rinsed away, the researchers were near with bladed layers of tungsten suspended successful water. This solution could past beryllium printed onto a glass, integrative oregon silicon substrate, forming a furniture of tungsten disulfide just one molecule thick.

The printed signifier remained unchangeable astatine ambient conditions, with nary protective instrumentality oregon coating, for astatine slightest 30 days. When it was frozen to temperatures beneath 7.3 kelvin (-266°C), adjacent aft being near successful the unfastened for a while, the ink became superconductive. “You could transportation it astir oregon instal it astatine country temperature, and past you conscionable person to frost it,” says Schoop. “You’d request liquid helium, though – you couldn’t bash it successful your location freezer, unfortunately.”

This process is overmuch simpler than those that person been utilized for different superconducting inks, which person required protective layers to support them from degrading over time. That could marque it easier to nutrient this ink industrially, though its somesthesia request blocks disconnected immoderate imaginable applications. “It could inactive beryllium applicable successful things that are already cooled down, similar successful quantum computers oregon MRI machines wherever you already chill down your systems a lot,” says Schoop. In the future, the researchers anticipation that this method could beryllium utilized to make inks that are superconductive at higher temperatures.

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