US scientists adjust ingredient ratios as a control knob to determine quantum properties of popular topological superconductor material iron tellurium selenide.
A collaborative effort between researchers at the Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and West Virginia University has led to a new way to switch a material’s quantum properties by simply adjusting the ingredient ratio.
This can, in effect, serve as a control knob when engineering exotic quantum phases in materials such as topological superconductors, a press release said. The world’s fastest supercomputers fall surprisingly short when attempting to carry out complex computations needed for drug discovery or finding solutions to climate change. Scientists are therefore developing quantum computers that can solve problems in minutes that today’s supercomputers take decades to solve. This is achieved by leveraging quantum states of materials. However, to advance quantum computing, scientists now need to improve their understanding of quantum materials and devise approaches to manufacture them at scale. The collaborative effort between researchers at UChicago PWE and WVU does exactly that. Ultra-thin films Iron telluride selenide is a recently discovered topological superconductor, meaning it exhibits both superconducting and exotic topological properties. The properties of superconductivity, strong spin coupling, and pronounced electronic correlations make it an ideal material for exploring quantum interactions. So far, scientists have been able to produce this material in bulk and use it in their experiments. Although it has exhibited unusual quantum states, bulk crystals can be difficult to work with because their composition varies from one point to another. Researchers at UChicagoPWE grew ultra-thin layers of the materials to just 10 atomic layers and then controlled the tellurium-to-selenium ratio to see how quantum properties changed. Control knob for quantum phasesWhen tellurium content exceeded 70 percent, the researchers observed that the material shifted from topologically trivial to non-trivial. This change allows the material to attain protected surface states that are useful in building quantum computers. While this has been observed in bulk crystals as well, the researchers encountered something more unexpected when they began working with pureiron telluride. At higher purity, the material’s topological surface state vanished, and it reverted to its trivial phase. Using advanced computational methods, the researchers found that the transition was effected by the motion of electrons within the material and showed that quantum materials are not fixed objects but highly tunable. “If the correlations are too strong, electrons get frozen in place,” explained Haoron Lin, a graduate student at UChicago PME. “If they’re too weak, the material loses its special topological properties. But at just the right level, you get a topological superconductor.”“It points to electronic correlations as a powerful and previously underappreciated tool for engineering topological quantum matter,” said Subhasish Mandal, an assistant professor of physics at West Virginia University, who was also involved in the work. Compared to other topological superconductors, these ultra-thin films offer additional benefits. The iron telluride selenide films operate at 13 Kelvin, compared with the 1 K required for aluminum-based systems. This allows them to be cooled with standard liquid helium, which is more cost-effective. Additionally, the ultra-thin structure is easier to work with than bulk materials and can readily be used in device fabrication. “If you’re trying to use this material for a real application, you need to be able to grow it in a thin film instead of trying to exfoliate layers off of a rock that might not have a consistent composition throughout,” added Lin in the press release. The research findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.
Inventions And Machines Itron Telluride Slenide Quantum Interactions Quantum Material Quantum Phases Topological Superconductors
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