Key Takeaways
- Quantum materials are key to advancing next-generation electronics, information technologies, and quantum computers.
- For over 30 years, world-leading X-ray tools and experts at the ALS have helped researchers from all over the world investigate quantum materials such as superconductors, topological insulators, and correlated electron materials.
- The Advanced Light Source Upgrade project will generate brighter beams of X-ray light, allowing researchers to push the boundaries of quantum materials research further by collecting data with far greater detail than has been possible before.
For more than three decades, the Advanced Light Source (ALS), a DOE Office of Science user facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has helped scientists from all over the world advance their understanding of quantum materials — solids whose electrons interact so strongly with each other that entirely new collective behaviors such as superconductivity, exotic magnetism, and other phenomena emerge, defying the predictions of conventional theory.
The ALS is a leading third-generation synchrotron light source that specializes in soft X-ray and UV light instrumentation while providing researchers access to a full spectrum of X-ray light for scientific research. Through the years, powerful tools at the ALS have helped researchers from academia, the national labs, and industry identify and confirm the presence of quantum phenomena, leading to a number of significant advances, including early insights into graphene; the discovery of superconducting topological insulators; the development of a one-atom-thin magnet that could advance next-generation memory devices; new insight into the magnetic properties enabling read/write memory and memory storage devices; and a method for building qubits for quantum computers from 2D metal organic frameworks (MOFs).
Read more on the ALS website
Image: UC San Diego doctoral researchers Wei “Francis” He (far left), Kate Matthews (second from right), and Robin Glefke (far right) from the Alex Frañó group at the COSMIC Beamline (7.0.1) at the Advanced Light Source. They are working with ALS staff scientists Sujoy Roy (center) and Sophie Morley (second from left) to investigate the properties of a quantum material of interest for a neuromorphic system.
Credit: Robinson Kuntz/Berkeley Lab