Q-NEXT Updates
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SLAC begins construction on quantum foundry
Construction on the SLAC Detector Microfabrication Facility, located in the Arrillaga Science Center, began on June 14. (Image by SLAC) The Q-NEXT Quantum Foundries effort has reached an important milestone: On June 14, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory began construction on its Detector Microfabrication Facility, one… Read More
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Verizon and Zurich Instruments join Q-NEXT
With the addition, Q-NEXT now partners with 12 leading U.S. quantum technology companies, along with three national laboratories and nine universities. Read More
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Keysight speaks quantum
Q-NEXT partner Keysight Technologies is known around the world as an electronics test and measurement company, but over the last five years, the California-based company has been supercharging its quantum capabilities. It boasts customer engagements in quantum computing, communication, sensing and materials research, and the Keysight team that works on quantum is more than 100 employees strong. Read More
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Convergence with quantum characterization
We’re part of the way through Q-NEXT’s first year, and the Extreme Scale Characterization Thrust has made significant strides in our mission to image and identify qubit structure, dynamics, and sources of decoherence — from the single-spin qubit all the way to the system level. Read More
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From the Quantum Foundry Thrust lead
Since Q-NEXT’s inception, the quantum foundry thrust has been ramping up design and build-out at Argonne and SLAC to meet scientific requirements for Q-NEXT and conform with on-site safety protocols. The foundries will serve as a national resource producing a robust supply chain of standardized materials and devices that will support both known and yet-to-be-discovered quantum-enabled applications. Read More
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Director's message
Q-NEXT has been working to lay the bedrock for cutting-edge quantum research since the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Energy announced awards for the establishment of five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers in August 2020. Together with you, our partners from national laboratories, universities and industry, we are tackling one of the grand challenges facing quantum science — how to manipulate and interconnect entangled states of matter. Read More
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David Awschalom wins global Breakthrough of the Year award
David Awschalom, Q-NEXT Chief Science Officer and the Liew Family Professor of Quantum Engineering and Physics at the University of Chicago, received the prestigious Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year in Physical Sciences for a pioneering body of work that broke the wall between quantum technology, molecules, and proteins. Read More
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Helium lifts new quantum computing concept
A team led by Jacob Covey, who is part of Q-NEXT and is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, laid out a new concept that could turn helium’s light weight into the next generation of quantum computers. The design relies on helium-3, an isotope with different quantum properties than the helium-4 used to cool MRI machines and fill party balloons. Once built, the computer could use high-powered lasers as “optical tweezers” to capture and control individual atoms of helium. Read More
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Researchers make materials that support quantum technology
Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who are part of Q-NEXT are engineering material systems that support quantum technology. Chris Anderson and his team are developing materials for quantum transduction — the conversion of quantum information from one form to another. Elizabeth Goldschmidt, Daniel Shoemaker, and colleagues are developing quantum memory technology that stores quantum information for extended periods of time. Read More
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Silicon Chip Offers New Way to Probe Quantum Materials in Strong Magnetic Fields
Scientists have created a silicon chip that can detect the electrical behavior of very small materials by using very high-frequency waves. The chip is made only from silicon and other non-superconducting materials and still performs very well when cooled from room temperature down to about 4 Kelvin. Read More
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Making quantum bits ready to use again much sooner
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Intel have found that a simple electrical pulse can quickly push a quantum dot qubit out of a latched state and return it to its starting condition with very high reliability. Read More
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Q-NEXT-developed open-source software receives 2026 R&D 100 award
SeQUeNCe, a free, open-source software developed by Argonne scientists with Q-NEXT support, is one of seven Argonne projects that received a 2026 R&D 100 Award. The SeQUeNCe software lets researchers test how quantum networks might work before building them. Read More
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Researchers generate spontaneous magnons that synchronize with external signals
Researchers at Argonne and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrate a method for generating stable ripples in magnetic materials called magnons. The work opens avenues for information processing in microelectronics and quantum devices. Read More
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Uncovering the hidden disorder in silicon quantum computers
From the U.S. Department of Energy: Q-NEXT researchers map the variation in materials to the atom level to scale up silicon qubits Read More
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Color centers in high-purity diamond
Researchers mapped how electron irradiation makes defects inside diamond, finding that creating more vacancies does not always produce more NV centers. Too many vacancies can form unwanted defects. This result can inform advances in quantum sensing. Read More
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Containing multitudes: SLAC scientist collaborates to create scalable qubits
At SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Q-NEXT collaborator Shannon Harvey develops quantum dots — a mass-producible type of qubit. Driven by curiosity about nature and how things work, Harvey draws on her facility for working at the nanoscale. Read More