Electrons Zoom Along Quantum Highways in New Material

Quantum highways

Scientists at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have identified a new material, MnBi6Te10, which can be used to make quantum highways along which electrons can move. These electron roads are possibly valuable for connecting the internal components of powerful, energy-efficient quantum computers.

When electrons pass through traditional metal wires, they reduce a small amount of energy– as heat– and a few of their intrinsic properties change. These wires can not be used to connect components of quantum computers that encode data in the quantum properties of electrons.

In the new job, published in the journal Nano Letters, researchers outlined how MnBi6Te10 works as a “magnetic topological insulator,” shuttling electrons near its perimeter while preserving the electrons’ energy and quantum properties.

“We have identified a material that has the potentiality to open up the quantum highway for electrons to stream with no dissipation,” claimed Asst. Prof. Shuolong Yang, who led the research. “This is a crucial milestone toward the engineering of topological quantum computers.”

Quantum connections

Quantum computers save data in qubits, a basic unit of information that shows quantum properties, including superposition. At the same time, researchers work to create devices that attach such qubits– sometimes in the form of single electrons– they also need new materials that can transfer the information stored in these qubits.

Theoretical physicists have propositioned that electrons could be transmitted in between topological qubits, forcibly streaming the electrons to a one-dimensional conduction channel on a material’s edge. Previous efforts to do this required incredibly low temperatures, which is only practical for some applications.

Yang said they opted to explore this specific material because they thought it would certainly operate at a much more realistic temperature.

Yang’s group began studying MnBi6Te10, using manganese to introduce magnetization to the semiconductor made by bismuth and tellurium. While electrons stream randomly throughout the inside of most semiconductors, the magnetic field in MnBi6Te10 pushes all electrons into a single-file line outside of the material.

The PME scientists acquired MnBi6Te10 that collaborators had fabricated at the 2D Crystal Consortium at Pennsylvania State University, led by Zhiqiang Mao. The group utilized a mix of 2 strategies– angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM)– to research exactly how the electrons within MnBi6Te10 acted and how the electrons’ movement varied with magnetic states. The TEM experiments were conducted in collaboration with the Pennsylvania State University lab of Nasim Alem.

Desired flaws

When they were probing the properties of MnBi6Te10, something baffled the research study team at first: Some parts of the material appeared to work well as magnetic topological insulators, while others did not.

According to Yang, some of them had the wanted electronic properties, and others did not, and the interesting thing was that it was quite tricky to differentiate their structures. “When we did structural measurements such as X-ray diffraction, we saw the same thing, so it was a little bit of a mystery.”

With their TEM experiments, however, they showed that all the parts of MnBi6Te10 that worked had something in common: flaws in the form of missing manganese spread throughout the material. More experiments revealed that these flaws were needed to drive the magnetic state and allow electrons to stream.

“An extremely high value of this work is, for the very first time, we have worked out how to tune these issues to allow quantum properties,” claimed Yang.

The researchers are currently seeking new methods of growing MnBi6Te10 crystals in the laboratory and probing what happens with ultra-thin, two-dimensional versions of the material.

Read the original article on PHYS.

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