LIVE SCIENCE - A new superconductor material could greatly improve the reliability of quantum computers, scientists say.
The electrical resistance of materials typically decreases as they are cooled. But some materials, called superconductors, maintain a gradually declining electrical resistance until they are cooled to their critical cut-off temperature, at which point their resistance becomes zero. Some types of superconductors, such as topological superconductors, can be used to transmit quantum data.
In a research paper published Aug. 23 in Science Advances, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, combined trigonal tellurium — a non-magnetic material and a type of chiral material (made of molecules that lack mirror-image symmetry) — with a thin film of gold.