⚡ A highly promising material for tomorrow's quantum computer

Today, when an electric current flows through a wire, some of the energy is lost as heat. Superconductors, however, completely avoid this problem. In these materials, the current passes with no resistance, which makes them very interesting.

There are several types of superconductors. The most common ones already work very well, but they have a limit: they transport electricity, not really information.


Scientists are therefore interested in a rarer version, called a "triplet" superconductor. Its particularity: it can transport both electricity and information related to electrons, called spin. This spin can be symbolized as a small magnetic orientation, like a compass pointing either north or south. A piece of binary information.

Why is this important? Because future technologies, like quantum computing and spintronics, can directly benefit from this type of information. If, on top of that, we can do it without energy loss, these machines become both more efficient and more stable.

Researchers studied a specific material, a mixture of two metals called NbRe. They observed that it behaves differently from classical superconductors, which suggests it might belong to this highly sought-after category.

Another interesting point: temperature. To function, these materials must be extremely cold. NbRe becomes superconducting around -447 °F (-266 °C). That's very cold, but a bit less extreme than other materials, which makes experiments easier.

If this material lives up to its promise, it could help improve the computers of the future, as well as many electronic systems.