The Department of Energy (DOE) has selected a multidisciplinary team that includes Cornell to advance a superconducting approach to advanced computer chip technology. The team will explore ways to use new superconducting materials and structures in ultra-energy-efficient Superconducting Digital (SCD) electronics aimed at emerging artificial intelligence and quantum computing technologies.

Their project, “Advanced superconducting integration process enabling sustainable hardware for AI and quantum computing,” is one of 11 multidisciplinary peer-reviewed projects selected by DOE to receive a total of $73 million in investments to accelerate new technologies from discovery to commercialization. The project is being funded through the Accelerate initiative through DOE’s Offices of Advanced Scientific Computing Research and Nuclear Physics.

Team member Katja Nowack, assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences, has significant experience in the characterization of superconducting materials. Her toolbox of techniques enables imaging the properties of these materials so they can be better tuned to application at scale.

“My lab brings expertise in a pretty unique way to image the relevant materials and structures,” Nowack said. “We specialize in a type of magnetic imaging at low temperatures that we typically use to explore emergent phenomena in quantum materials. But it so happens that our imaging is well-suited to help develop a greater understanding of the fundamentals of the materials involved in SCD electronics. This is a critical need to advance the kind of technology we pursue in this project.”

Read the full story on the College of Arts and Sciences website.