As part of the 2015 Materials Research Society National Fall Meeting, taking place on Wednesday, December 2 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts, the MRS Bulletin will unveil its special 40th anniversary issue, entitled “Materials & Engineering: Propelling Innovation." The commemorative issue details the future of innovation in materials research and engineering.
One of the feature articles of the 40th anniversary issue is a collaboration between PME Professors David Awschalom and Giulia Galli, postdoctoral scholar and lead author of the article, William Koehl of the Awschalom group, and postdoctoral scholar Hosung Seo of the Galli group. They describe single quantum spin states in diamond and silicon carbide, along with the current status and outlook of spin-based engineering research for emerging quantum information technologies. Additionally, they employ first-principles computational modeling techniques based on density functional theory (DFT) to explore new material hosts with the potential for applications in quantum computing, communication, and sensing.
A leading candidate for quantum information technologies is the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect center in diamond, which has been demonstrated to be a successful solid-state quantum bit (qubit). This has propelled further exploration for similar defect spins in other semiconductors, such as silicon carbide (SiC). The coherent quantum control of these defect spins, in conjunction with existing microfabrication techniques, has tremendous implications for the development of semiconductor-based, wafer-scale quantum technologies, which can also exhibit the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.
The robust integration of experiments from the Awschalom group and theory from the Galli group, characteristic of PME, is central to this MRS feature article, and will undoubtedly contribute to many more discoveries in this burgeoning area of research.